They are lying through their teeth

It's probably because am radio hurts their profit somehow

Fuckers can design in an option to turn the hardware off when not in use and use more power efficient components and programming

There was an arstechnica piece that was a bit sooner (it’s passed the house). They said 82 million people “use AM radio”. (Most of that is probably while driving.)

The argument for it is basically, that AM-radio listeners are declining and that means stations are closing up. If they remove them, AM radio peeps “loose” the largest segment of their audience.

The “concern” is that the public warning system relies on 77 of the 4.5k stations to broadcast warnings.(emergency and weather/hazard radios)

The issue here is that it’s basically bullshit. They could just buy the towers as a stop gap until better systems come into play. (Though to be fair, as old as it is, it’s pretty much the best for that kind of alert. Might be permanent.) and its really doesn’t matter- AM radio is dying; at least as entertainment ornmews services.

You can make an AM radio with a fucking potato. What a joke.

The issue is the motors generate EM emissions that interfere with AM reception. To still have AM, they have to add shielding, which adds cost, as well as weight that will reduce range and efficiency.

... said Albert "Don't call me Al" Gore....

See this comment: https://sh.itjust.works/comment/11323676 on an alternate thread to this same discussion which gives a great run down of AM & FM radio systems.

Would be nice if phones came with am/fm radios built in

It's a shame that they took out this feature from smartphones when they killed the aux jack

I’m not sure what people would do with normal radios, but people in a severe weather area might own a weather radio that gets alerts from NOAA, and that’s on VHF, though they usually have AM/FM as well. I lived in tornado alley for a while and yeah, we would listen to whatever we could receive (FM in more populated areas, but AM when way out in the sticks) and we had a NOAA radio too.

Unless there's an emergency.

The way I read it, this is ensuring everyone has the most effective analogue radio in their car because that's how emergency broadcasts would go out. Seems sensible to me.

To be fair the law seems to require it be done at no extra cost to the consumer, but I'm sure they'll find something else that suddenly becomes much more expensive to install than it was before.

There are also AM NPR stations (I wasn't aware of this myself until a few days ago), especially in large states with small populations like Alaska.

I listen to NPR, and not requiring AM radio in cars would literally (or "finally" if you're an idiot conservative) kill the National Public Radio system for good.

This story originally appeared on Ars Technica

Looks like you can read the article, without a paywall, here: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/05/am-radio-is-a-lifeline-lawmakers-say-tech-and-auto-industries-disagree/

https://archive.ph/hdgAm

Open in browser, enable reader mode, (likely on the right side of the address bar)