If every car automatically has one, you don’t need to go out and buy a standalone radio. Keeping the AM radio in new cars (even adding the shielding for the radio in EVs) likely does not add much incremental expense to the cost of the car. And, if you are out driving when bad weather occurs, you don’t need to stop and dig out a radio.
A reasonable person might, somewhere along the line, say, “you know, I see no use case for me to ever need an AM radio, but maybe you might just have a point.” shrug
I’m still not seeing why a Congressional mandate for cars to have obsolete radios that interfere with their electronics is a better idea than just buying a battery-powered portable radio from Walmart.
This is just corporate welfare for the talk radio industry.
Because not everyone will actually go out and buy a battery-powered portable radio from Walmart. In fact, it’s likely that only the over-prepared will.
It is undoubtedly that, too. But the fact that AM talk radio will benefit from this does not mean that it is not also a valuable thing for public safety.
Okay. You’ve gone out and purchased a battery-powered portable radio from Walmart. What is the likelihood that the radio is in your car when you’re on the road at a time that an emergency broadcast is made?
A number of makers have actually stopped doing that. For instance all the non-hybrid versions of the Honda CRV have no satellite radio as of the 2026 model, and before that only the top model came with it.
Yep. Any kind of public universal disaster preparedness system should always be opt-out, rather than opt-in. If a car owner wants to disable the AM radio device that came standard-issue with their car, they can do so (AFAIK there’s no law against it either).
The existence of this emergency is not already self-evident
There has been no advance warning or any way I could have anticipated this danger before I got into my car
All other forms of mass communication, including FM radio, satellite radio, internet of both the cellular and satellite variety, TV, reverse 911, and phone service in general have failed
AM radio alone is still functional
The only way I could possibly learn what to do to avoid certain death is by AM radio
The only access I have to AM radio is the one in my car
I have the presence of mind to turn on the AM radio and know what frequency to tune to
How pressing of an issue is this? How often is this kind of scenario playing out that it requires federal legislation right now? How many preventable deaths are occurring because Teslas don’t have AM radio? Why does the auto industry need to spend billions of dollars to solve this problem?
Extremist fucking much? This is ridiculous. I’ve tried to rationally explain to you the why, but you are hung up on “AM radio is awful and outdated,” and “I have never had need of it, so therefore no one could possibly have need of it.”
As with every catastrophic large-scale disaster scenario, let us all fervently hope that it never becomes a pressing issue at all at the national level. (AM radio emergency alerts are, as has been pointed out, in wide use and very effective at emergency communication for smaller-scale disasters.) However, I don’t think getting rid of an immensely widespread near-universal emergency communications system that’s already in place is a wise response to the recognition that “wow, immensely widespread near-universal emergencies don’t really seem to happen much, do they?”.
You seem to have some trouble grasping the concept of a multi-layered emergency communication system. The core issue isn’t “Is there absolutely no alternative to using the proposed system?” The core issue is “In actual use, will this system succeed in rapidly reaching significant numbers of people who missed getting the crucial information by other means?” And the answer, based on decades of experience with smaller-scale disaster emergency communication, is “yes”.
And what if the emergency is self-evident, but what to do about it isn’t? That’s pretty much how absolutely every emergency works.
If there’s pretty much any kind of major emergency at all, a large number of people will be in their cars when it happens, because at any given moment, there are always a lot of people in cars. And in every situation, having some means of communicating information to those people in cars will help. And AM radio is currently the only reliable means of communicating in an emergency.
And this bit is just downright silly, like blaming the US Mint for bribery and corruption in US politics post-Citizens United, because it’s the Mint’s fault there’s so much money floating around.
What actually enabled the cancerous spread of US conservative talk radio was not the existence of the AM radio format and AM radio reception in itself, but very specific regulatory decisions such as the 1987 repeal of the Fairness Doctrine and the 1996 Telecommunications Act that decimated local independent ownership of radio stations.
Well, I’m failing to envision a scenario in which there are massive numbers of people on the road who immediately need to be warned of an impending emergency, FM radio and the cell network have failed, and we’re not all about to die anyway. May as well just drive directly into the mushroom cloud at that point.
Assuming the EMP didn’t fry my car’s engine AND its AM radio.
Doesn’t even need to be “massive numbers of people on the road,” or a major national emergency. You could just be out in the boonies during a severe weather outbreak, where – again – cell service can be very spotty. Also, FM radio signals do not carry nearly as far as AM signals do.
What do you suppose is the amount of overlap between people who live in rural areas without cell service or FM radio, and people who drive brand new electric cars?
Again: Earthquake. Hurricane. Tornado. It’s not hard to imagine. And the people probably already know that there’s an emergency, but might need to know things like which direction to drive to avoid the worst of it.
I’m having trouble imagining how any of those could take out FM radio, satellite radio, TV, and the cell network, but leave high-power AM transmitters intact and functioning.
Or how I’d be able to keep my EV charged to listen to the radio.
It wasn’t just EVs which were getting the AM radios removed (or planned to be removed) by the manufacturers. In 2023, Ford announced a plan to remove AM radios from all of their vehicles, both EVs and ICEs (which they later reversed under pressure).
Besides, people who don’t live in rural areas are, in fact, allowed to visit them: on vacations, day trips, camping, etc.
