The obvious solution is to sell small AM radio receiver gizmos that connect via USB to modern cars to provide power to the gizmo and send audio back to the entertainment system.
The very few people who need AM radio can have it that way. Just as in the early days the very few people who “needed” to play their own tapes (8 track or cassette) bought adaptors that let them play those content sources into their cars’ AM/FM only radios.
In this case we’re accommodating “late adopters”, not early adopters, but the sentiment and the efficient solution is the same.
Now this is the bipartisanship I know! Intervening in the private market under a flimsy public safety justification to satisfy the demands of a small but very vocal constituency. I love politics.
My 2020 vehicle does . It also has FM and Sirius and I can play music/podcasts from my phone over the car’s system. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if I use the AM radio more than any one of the other three. Because I can’t get local news or talk or baseball on the others. Although I don’t know that the government should have gotten involved in this.
It’s definitely a minority - but I don’t know that around 25-30% using it at least once a month is “tiny” .
I was wondering if it being now these years later they were going to trade in their 2014 cat for a 2024…
The former leads to the later: the broadcasters lobby “gently reminded” the elected officials of where the “local news or talk” action happens for radio listeners. It’s not concern about emergency communications it’s dear Congressman do you want both Morning MAGA Mike and the Afternoon Blue Crew Ladies banging a drum on how you are helping doom the hometown station and forcing everyone to pay a monthly subscription to stream.
This shouldn’t cost buyers anything extra. Cars have come equipped with AM/FM radios since the early 70’s. AFAIK that hasn’t changed.
Now the car makers want to take away AM. Talk radio is important to a lot of people. I like the sports discussions, there’s also religion and politics.
Somehow, I don’t expect cars to get any cheaper by removing a small feature like AM.
In the NY metro area, the sports talk and broadcasts have moved to FM so my AM is no longer needed unless I’m traveling fairly far by car. The 660 AM will make it almost to Boston heading North and to 695 around Baltimore heading south.
So pretty rarely and I could live without AM with ease.
But I do occasionally flip to an AM News station while driving. Again, I could live without this with ease.
Consider a Bluetooth FM transmitter. You can get them for less than 20 bucks on Amazon. Getting one of these was a “game changer” for road trips in our house before Bluetooth in new cars became common.
Have you read the thread? Millions of cars have been made without AM radios. They would have to remanufacture to add them again.
The proposed law isn’t about not removing them. The law is about forcing manufacturers to include them who have not had them in certain models for years and in some cases ever.
I’ll also note that you don’t have the education or work experience to intelligently speculate on what the costs would be nor on the technical difficulties.
No. The problem the auto manufacturers are complaining about is the cost of electrical shielding in the car, not the additional cost in the radios.
As to remanufacture, this is not a problem: the industry has switched from AM/FM radios to fancy automotive infotainment systems which are in-car systems that combines entertainment such as radio and music playing with driving information, including navigation, ADAS, and vehicle settings. And there are very frequent changes in these–so adding AM radio would be just one of many updates to be made.
I think we are in agreement here. I was including things like the shielding as an additional cost of adding the radio, not just the single component which is inexpensive.
No, the car makers want to take away the antennas on the outside of the vehicle, all of them. They would prefer that everyone used thier in vehicle celluar data to stream services that they can charge you for. Providing AM is cheap since as you noted it has been paired with FM for decades now.
Antennas cost money and they distract from the style lines of the car. In the not too distant future it will be common for vehicles to not have antennas or side mirrors. And as mentioned, electrical shielding cost money as well.
Eh, neither my 1999 Camry and 2009 Accord, both AM/FM/CD equipped, had any protruding or visible external aerial. Their antennae were embedded in the windshield perimeter as are those of many current vehicles. Sure, though, the makers would want to save themselves whatever that costs…
Most cars have Sirrius XM these days, which is why you see so many external antennas now. That and putting antennas in the glass is expensive to manufacter and expensive to replace. They want to get back to those 1999 styles.
Adding streaming service is going to be a major revenue stream for car manufactuers going forward.
It’s always greed with corporations. If they didn’t think they’d make more money by removing AM function from radios then they wouldn’t do it. Whether it’s a good idea or not doesn’t come into the decision making process.