A controversial bill that would require all new cars to be fitted with AM radios looks set to become a law in the near future. Yesterday, Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass) revealed that the “AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act” now has the support of 60 US Senators, as well as 246 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives, making its passage an almost sure thing. Should that happen, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would be required to ensure that all new cars sold in the US had AM radios at no extra cost.
Lol. “Proponents claim it will reduce electric vehicle range”. What a fucking joke.
Here’s the thing about AM. Especially during any disaster. Damned near everything can get knocked out, power wise within 50 miles of you. At that point, you have no cell service, no data, and no FM radio. But AM? AM operates at a lower/longer frequency band. It can reach over double what FM can, and much further still, at night when it’s signal can actually reflect off the ionosphere. Hundreds of miles.
So if shit ever REALLY goes down, AM radio is the most usable form of spreading information across the country. Bombs, freak accidents, mad scientist doomsday device, war, floods, tornados, etc. Anything that knocks a city out on power, AM will give you that information you’ll need about where to go and what to look out for.
The equipment on an AM radio transmitter is also more robust and is more likely to survive an EMP blast.
So the argument is… When a bomb knocks out everything and basically all infrastructure, we need to make sure the Teslas and other pure electrics have integrated AM radio? So they can’t charge and can’t use the device in the situation you specifically describe, but definitely NEED it by law the rest of the time?
Sure I guess.
Maybe if this is the purpose we mandate every new public library or other public space provide free access to AM radio receivers.
All auto manufacturers were planning on going “no AM” and “today’s” amount of AM radios isn’t much of a problem, but 20 years down the line it very much would be.
Also, the entire reason for manufactuerers wanting to drop AM is just to cheap out on $5 worth of electric shielding.
I guess I still just don’t buy it. I am not buying a car for emergency preparedness purposes and don’t ever use the AM radio anyway. Sure yeah maybe AM is the way in a disaster, but why is the onus on cars? It’s like arguing that you can’t eliminate a cigarette lighter because then you couldn’t heat canned food or you have to have bench seats so there is a place to sleep in a disaster. Required AM for cell phones makes more sense than requiring it for cars.
Cell phones can’t do AM/FM radio signals very well. Antenna is too small. Back when cell phones had radios built in, the headphones cable doubled as an antenna.
Plus, people who need travel or power when all power is out, go to their cars.
So no. Cell phones aren’t capable. Also, cigarette lighters were totally incapable of heating food. A half inch coil of heat that stays hot for all of under two minutes isn’t going to heat your can of beans.
You sound like one of those fools who’d build a house below the tsunami warning signs because their hasn’t been one for over 30 years.
One tool one job dude. You want to mandate people have an AM radio, then make that the rule. Or a generator, or a stove or whatever. A car doesn’t need an AM radio. It is standard because it was historically common, it is not needed by most people except as a tool to serve them shitty right wing and religious talk radio.
Get off you short and weird fucking soapbox. And if I sound like a tsunami builder you sound like a doomsday prepper: get your guns, 6 months of food, and iodine tabs for your family to the vault straight away instead of commenting here.
How about a tornado? You see the weather got green so you switch to am radio because that’s how you hear about the weather which is drastically important that you know immediately.
How old are you? You open a browser and look at live Doppler. If the power is out you’re in the shit already and should shelter in place but you use a phone in that case same purpose.
Nobody hears the tornado siren and goes “Jesus Christ, Mabel! Go to the car for the AM radio!”
If I’m driving? I know to switch to radio. Especially if I’m in bumfuck nowhere. Especially especially if I’m in Appalachia where the mountains fuck with cell service and fm, but leave am fine. Sure I’ll have to hear a sermon, but I know it’s the emergency broadcast medium of the United States federal government. Also vehicles should have it in case cell service is down. In case your phone is dead. In case you forgot your phone. In case a lot of shit happens because I know if all else goes wrong the feds are broadcasting on AM unless things are ok.
I’m 29.
I think a great option for you then is to buy a car with an AM radio or to just, idk, buy an AM radio. I myself am getting out of the car at the earliest possible opportunity in that situation. But as a plains dwelling EV driver who is mostly at home, this is something of a fantastical edge case.
If you don’t have a radio and you regularly need it or anticipate it will be your lifeline, it sounds like YOU the consumer made a mistake.
And I think it’s fair for my federal government to demand all vehicles have emergency access to their emergency alert system. Like that’s what we’re talking about here. A dirt cheap system that takes basically no energy to maintain compatibility in an industry that’s infamous for its willingness to kill its customers for a buck.
Now if we want an emergency band that it’s allowed to mandate sure. But honestly as a nice to have, fuck it make the bastards throw in an fm too.
There’s places with no cell coverage and solid AM/FM radio coverage
And AM travels twice as far as FM.
It is more like say some kind of disaster destroys a local/regional power grid. It could take weeks or maybe months to restore power. Those big transformers are built to order and normally power companies order them 2 years out.
This would disable most if not all other forms of communication. Local FM is out, cell towers go down, and the local Internet is unpowered hell local newspapers couldn’t even print a paper. An AM radio station outside of the area could easily be used to transmit important information to the whole area. This was more or less the plan during the cold war if there was a limited exchange of nuclear weapons. Yes a large exchange of nuclear weapons or a nation wide EMP burst would disable AM too, but at that point there is likely no longer a functioning government to send out information.
Was the plan during the cold war that we had to get in our cars to hear said message? I don’t take issue with AM, by why does it need to be standard in every vehicle and not in public spaces or cell phones or clock radios or something else?
Not necessarily back then more or less every one also has a home radio which often could be run on battery. But the car provided an independent power source that was removed from the grid. For most of the cold war cars were purely mechanical no micro chips to fry. Also vacuum tubes were a common thing which are much more resistant to EMP.
For cell phones, kind of a space issue. Like, they’re already trying to use all the space inside the case.