>Unlike radio alerts, they can also contain an embedded hyperlink to guide the recipient to helpful information within seconds of receiving the alert; given that 85% of Americans with a cell phone own a smartphone<p>Really stupid quote, who paid for the article. If an emergency, people may need to travel in their auto. Am I suppose to play with my Cell Phone while driving ?<p>Also if a weather issue will Cell Towers work ? How will your Cell Battery get charged. Real dumb thinking. AM Radio signals can be heard many hundreds of miles, some even a thousand miles.<p>So yes, to me AM is a must for dire emergencies.
While it is true that there are other modes of emergency communications, AM radio relies on nearly zero infrastructure integrity.<p>As long as a broadcast station has diesel or batteries and hasn’t burned to the ground, it can continue to deliver urgent and life saving information to millions of people over hundreds of kilometers, despite the complete failure of all other intermediary infrastructure.<p>An high quality AM radio costs about 25 cents to integrate into existing infotainment systems, plus the cost of the coax and antenna. Realistically speaking, we are talking about less than 5 dollars in additional expense at scale.<p>That’s cheap for a communication system that is extremely robust in the face of the worst possible types of disasters and emergencies.<p>Cell phone and data networks are fragile by comparison and subject to congestion and other issues. An AM radio in every cellphone would be a software-only fix, as long as you used the headphone or charging cable as an antenna lead.<p>Software defined radio means just about any modern microcontroller can act as a radio receiver over a broad spectrum of wavelengths for Pennie’s in additional components.<p>This is about capture of the infotainment environment in vehicles, not the one to five dollars needed to include AM broadcast technology.
Like many other authors looking to sensationalize and editorialize, this author forgets that poor people exist and forgets that rural areas exist. Also, the author seems be unaware that an emergency could make existing infrastructure unusable.<p>AM radio's value for emergency situations is that it can be received literally hundreds of miles from the transmitter.<p>What're the reasons for NOT including AM? The only thing I found is mention that including it will "hinder progress". What progress? Since when does including the most basic, tiny bit of functionality somehow "hinder progress"? Is there literally any other reason at all? Please, someone, tell me.<p>Is this really a news piece if the author can't even come up with the slightest reason beyond the most specious bit of bullshit from a self-interest group?
There are areas in the US that do not have cell/data coverage where important road information updates (think mountain pass conditions) are broadcast over AM radio.
Personally, I’d never buy a car without AM radio. It’s often the only signal available when out in the wilderness, and even within civilization it’s the only readily accessible chunk of the EM spectrum that seems to still allow free speech. (edit: would love to hear people’s experience with CB/shortwave/ham/etc radio)<p>I don’t know that we need legislation guaranteeing it, but I’d hope the invisible hand of the market sides with me anyways.<p>That said I don’t see myself getting a new car regardless, at least not one made after the law requiring a television screen in your field of view while operating multi ton machinery at 60+ mph was put in place.
This seems like a strange hill for automotive manufacturers to take a stand on: I can't imagine that the bill of materials for the AM radio is anything but tiny.
See also previous discussion, "Ford to drop AM radio in new models, except commercial vehicles":<p>* <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35416627" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35416627</a>
Didn't even realize they were making cars without AM. How else am I supposed to listen to local sports and bluegrass? Tape a radio to my freaking dash? Some of yall sound like you've never met a rural person in your life. The BBC world service mirror in my city is on AM for pete sake.
I have no preference either way to keep or get rid of AM radio, but I have to wonder, do people under 30 even know what AM radio is or how to tune into it? Just like with manual transmissions and cursive writing, it's probably something they've never had any need to do. Does it help in an emergency if you not only don't know <i>how</i> to do it, but also don't know <i>to</i> do it. I was born in the 70s and listened to plenty of AM radio, but for the last 30+ years AM radio has basically meant "low quality far right talk and religious programming maybe with some country music on the side." I haven't even thought of turning on AM radio in literally decades.
Meanwhile in Europe: <a href="https://www.worlddab.org/dab/emergency-warning" rel="nofollow">https://www.worlddab.org/dab/emergency-warning</a><p>Oh, and also <a href="https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/security-and-emergencies/emergency-assistance-vehicles-ecall/index_en.htm" rel="nofollow">https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/security-and-em...</a> for good measure (unrelated).
So you're hunkered down in your home's tornado safe spot. How's the AM radio in your car going to provide you updates? It's not.<p>That's why you should have an emergency radio. They even make models that are hand-cranked so that you don't even need power. They also have flashlights and distress signals.<p>There's no need for Congress to stick their noses into matters they obviously haven't thought through.
Unrelated but I wish electric automakers used the electromagnetic interference of their motors as an engine noise, since after watching some videos of Teslas picked up on the AM frequency it's quite a nice sound
AM radio is a tried and true technology. It's super simple. I think at the very least they should come to a compromise in which certain emergency frequencies are available/accessible in all cars.
If there were a crisis I'm not sure it would occur to me to try AM radio, or any radio, nor would I know <i>where</i> to tune (I guess I could search).<p>Back in the '89 Bay Area earthquake I did think of this, and the FM stations were broadcasting the emergency signal and told me where to tune to. But back then tape or radio was generally the choice anyway. I haven't listened to broadcast radio in 20 years.
Question to the knowledgeable group here, is AM radio frequency useful for anything else? Would terminating commercial radios benefit any other industry?
The BOM for a an AM radio is a few dollars only, what's the point of even lobbying? An antenna coaxial and a superheterodyne circuit on the main radio baseband (modern cars all come with a cellular connection) is all you need. You barely need any new parts, the existing components can be modified to support the feature.
I would like to see this, and I would also like to see an expansion of the FM band (with support for it in cars also mandated). Low-VHF TV channels 4-6 are adjacent to the existing FM band and are not really suitable for digital TV broadcasting due to the type of noise they experience (there are very few TV channels which still use those frequencies, and the most of the ones that did post-digital transision used channel 6 to broadcast as pseudo-radio stations since most FM radios could receive the analog audio of channel 6). That's 18 MHz of spectrum which would nearly double the size of the FM broadcast band which is getting quite croweded in many markets with the FCC allowing AM stations to broadcast low-power FM translators to try to help their market share.
While it's true AM radio is very easy receive, I imagine it's a much less effective use of bandwidth compared to the amount of information (the shannon kind) modern digital communication can cram on there, no?<p>Wouldn't it be better to repurpose those frequencies for country wide digital broadcast that could also send other data during emergency situations?
So people without cars are supposed to do what?<p>Fast forward to the first emergency that actually needs this and you're gonna see a bunch of asphyxiation deaths from people running their cars in the garage to listen to the last AM radio they have.<p>If they really want to keep AM radio viable start a public awareness campaign about its importance and make radios available for free.
I mean, AM radio is basically dead (as is FM radio). Most of the stations are foreign language, talk-shows and and in at least one case in the USA, overt foreign propaganda by an unfriendly nation. I imagine the radio spectrum can be repurposed for better uses.