195
[US] House passes bill requiring AM radio in all new cars sold nationwide
(www.congress.gov)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2026
195 points (95.3% liked)
Technology
88212 readers
3756 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Our department of transportation gives updates over AM radio and it’s easier to do while driving vs going into the 511 app to see what’s up. And since it’s statewide it’s pretty useful. That’s the only thing I use AM for. They’ve got signs in major corridors that flash to tell you there’s a new message. Old school, but reliable.
That’s a good point, there are still a lot of those information/alert radios around and they’re basically all a low powered AM station. That could be important for people driving by and not having that option reduces safety. I have a hard time believing that AM receivers are that expensive for cars that it’s really worth the trade-off. It’s probably not something that gets used often, but when it’s needed you want people to have it.
Its not about the cost of the radio, the hardware for a digital am receiver at this point is pennies... The issue is electric and hybrid drivetrains generate a lot of very strong localized EMI from the motors and motor inverter drives, and AM is inherently bad at rejecting EMI so it usually wipes out most stations unless they are very strong. It gets really expensive trying to reduce or filter that out.
Didn’t know about that, although it makes sense. That does complicate things!