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New electric cars won’t have AM radio. Rightwingers claim political sabotage
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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Politics
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so hear me out... not a popular opinion by any stretch of the imagination.. but the real reason manufacturers are doing this is because of how much RF spectral splatter EVs put out (think inverters/switching noise, computers, etc) and it's bad news for ham radio operators that use AM/SSB bands. it's cheaper to ignore the problem than it is to EMI shield everything to reduce the noise floor low enough so that the AM receiver works in the car, otherwise you'll hear a bunch of static/popping/whining from the EV electronics that make the AM radio effectively useless. a similar concern that has since gone away was the battle over BPL [broadband over powerline] for the same reasons in that power lines would be effectively big antennas radiating crap in the AM bands. personally, i'm in favor of keeping AM around if it forces these manufacturers to follow proper EM shielding practices, but again... minority opinion for my own selfish reasons. the FCC doesn't give a shit about ham radio, so it's not looking good.
Damn, I wasn't aware of this aspect of electric vehicles, but that makes sense and is interesting. Thanks for posting, looks like I have some reading to do.
and it's not an easy problem to solve. proper EMI mitigation is a super tough engineering problem that you can make an entire career out of (and make good money doing so). there are so many sneak paths that can pop up that it turns into a constant game of whack-a-mole... simple things like applying a piece of tape to a cable harness next to a metal plate can either make the product pass or fail a radiated emissions spec....it's crazy. and the automotive industry is so behind in the latest tech, the whole chip shortage thing during covid was because they're using way outdated process nodes that no one wants to invest money in. don't get me wrong, my fellow EEs in automotive do a good job given what they have to deal with, but they don't have the experience in RF like us cellular/radio guys... obviously.
1,000% this.
Except it's not just that a few hobbyists can't play with their toys. The frequencies being disrupted aren't limited to amateur radio bands which make up only a small fraction of the radio spectrum. This has the potential to disrupt military and emergency communication worldwide and I'm actually shocked it's not a bigger issue. RF Pollution is a nasty problem and is one of the main reasons the FCC exists.
Making this a political side-show about talk radio weakens the whole debate in my opinion, even if it has the potential to grab the attention of a wider audience. It's much easier to refute that and "win" the argument.