It’s not just that it’s more reliable in a emergency, rural areas still don’t have great cell service, like there are seriously places that have very little Internet bandwidth at best. I was in crash and had to go 5 miles down the highway to actually get service to call the highway patrol. The area I live in has…

One reason they are dropping AM radios is because they are doing such a piss poor job of shielding all the computers being crammed into today’s cars. This lack of shielding causes interference with AM radio. The automakers need to properly shield their electronics and keep AM radio not only for emergency use, but for…

And it’s fair to ask the question if you don’t understand, but this is why we don’t make reactionary decisions based on information we don’t understand. Public Safety, like any good system should have backups that are extremely reliable, and if anything, just more and more and more different types of backups. AM fits…

“...the proposed law would cost automakers an additional 3.8 billion dollars between now and 2030.”

It’s just so exhausting to have to explain this over and over, isn’t it? The entire g-d point of having something like AM radio around is that cell phones won’t fucking work during a true disaster/emergency, yet people keep shouting “yOu CaN juSt dO iT On YOuR PHoNe!!! It’s as ridiculous as someone arguing that it’s…

AM works in areas that higher-frequency transmitters won’t: mountainous and rural regions are the most obvious. Think about how far a single AM frequency goes compared to FM.

Don’t waste your time with these people. They are the same people that didn’t realize that inflation was a possiblity, That a world existed before wifi, they forget the blackout of 2003.

The cost to add AM radio is minimal, regardless of what these “estimates” say. These days, a complete AM radio chip (essentially just RF and IF sections, as the amplifier is a separate set of IC’s), costs next to nothing. Shielding and a ferrite antenna costs slightly more, but still very little. Interface is…

This is primarily about using it in a vehicle, and depending on where you live it’s pretty easy to be out of range of of FM or even cellular signals. The point is there are some good reasons for it to exist and the actual cost of it to automakers is essentially a rounding error. But for the people that use it, there…

It’s typical for cell phones to become useless in many emergency situations, especially with events like natural disasters. AM has much greater coverage and dependability when it comes to critical information and updates. Not being the mainstream way during regular day to day activity doesn’t mean it’s not a vital…

Maybe if you live in a place with no disasters or without the potential for one, this makes sense.

Hurricane zones disagree with relying on cell phones. Just a few months ago, the entire Houston area lost power for 3-10 days, depending on the location. That included major losses in cell service and at least 1 cable provider going down as far away as Austin. AM radio still worked. Tons of people in hurricane areas…

The Center for Automotive Research concluded in 2023 that the proposed law would cost automakers an additional 3.8 billion dollars between now and 2030.

There are loads of places without great (or any) cell service. And plenty of weather and wildfire emergencies & evacuations that can go from ‘possible’ to ‘imminent’ very quickly. I don’t listen to AM, but having it around as a low-tech option is prudent. Also, we don’t have a radio in the house anymore, so a car…

“Boomers will just have to listen to their local Cornhole, Iowa HS football game some other way.”

AM bands typically are longer wavelengths, which don’t fit into tiny cell phone antennas. To make it more compact a large chunk of ferrite can help, but it doesn’t do it all. The radio reception for tiny receivers use the headphone as the antenna, but that’s not necessarily the right length to be properly tuned.

Obviously none of you have watched any apocalyptic/zombie/WW3 movie. In the worst way, that’s why we need AM radio. If there is a large regional disaster, mobile phones and tvs aren’t going to work. So, assuming it made it through the disaster, your car is where you could get information. I’ve sat through a few…

I disagree.

Counterpoint to most of what you pose here: Unless AM radios are either an optional extra, or a delete with a credit attached, I don’t expect any of this savings to make it back to the person buying the car. See what the industry has done to the spare tire as an example.

I’m of the belief that it should stay for public safety stations and weather notifications.