But in today's society, honestly, who's going to bother?
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Fewer cars with AM radios...
- Thread starter davideduardo
- Start date
Those who are loyal listeners to WLW and WDIA.
You could have knocked me over with a feather! I've been reading your posts for years and that's the first time that I've noticed you displaying a sense of humor! That was absolutely fantastic, congratulations!
Depends. The guy on my friend's thread rented a Pacifica for a weekend. He didn't bother to go through the menu, but he noticed that AM was missing (or so he thought). I think if he'd paid $45,000 for it and was going to live with it for a few years, he'd have dug around in a few more menus.
The point is, every time this topic has been broached, here or elsewhere, it gets response. And a chunk of that response is people saying that certain new cars don't come with AM radios anymore when, in fact, most of them do. If they're electric cars, those people often take Tesla's excuse for not including them and apply them as a generality, even though Tesla is the only American EV manufacturer to not include AM and to use interference as the excuse, and the only American manufacturer of any kind of car to not include AM.
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You'll be singing a different tune when Elon Musk buys GM and Ford! Well, at least until he backs out of each deal ....
Frankly, I'm surprised he still owns Tesla. I expected Toyota to buy him out five years ago as an easy way into the EV business.
You haven't been paying attention.You could have knocked me over with a feather! I've been reading your posts for years and that's the first time that I've noticed you displaying a sense of humor! That was absolutely fantastic, congratulations!
Or maybe I haven't been doing it here.
Actually, my name goes all the way back to when I sent my first ever email. It was congratulating the radio station I liked on their new music director who needed to show off his talent on the late night talk shows. And I didn't know how to fix the typo. A month later things were back to normal but KWXY seems to have hired the same guy in 2022.
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But even if AM is available, do most people paying serious money for a new car, even care?
If they didn’t, I doubt we’d be seeing so many “Hey! This car doesn’t have AM!” posts and stories here and elsewhere.
Consider: There are exactly zero cheap cars being sold without AM. Even the oldest Millennials are still a few years away from their peak earning years.
A decent percentage of the people looking to buy a Tesla, one of the two Benz EVs, the Porsche Taycan, Audi e-Tron, VW ID.4, or any new Volvo (the sum total of cars sold in the USA today without AM radios) are likely 50+.
There are still major news and talk stations (WCBS, WINS, KFI) without FM simulcasts and, outside of groups like ours, HD-2 and HD-3 are kinda fuzzy concepts.
So, yeah.
Agreed. Since he is a serial entrepreneur and not a dedicated auto maker letting go of Tesla at this point makes great sense.
Maybe an old school solution - an AM to FM converter (or AM to Bluetooth), the AM radio could include noise blanking and switchable bandwidth.
(I used my Radio Shack FM to AM converter for ~7 years, although the frequency output of the converter changed a little during cold weather [car was parked outside all the time], it took about 10 minutes after turning on the heater to get the output frequency correct so my car digital AM radio could tune it in)
Kirk Bayne
(I used my Radio Shack FM to AM converter for ~7 years, although the frequency output of the converter changed a little during cold weather [car was parked outside all the time], it took about 10 minutes after turning on the heater to get the output frequency correct so my car digital AM radio could tune it in)
Kirk Bayne
Why would Toyota destroy their hard-earned excellent reputation by buying that heap-of-garbage Tesla?
What I said—an easy way into the EV business. Until the 2023 bZ4X, they didn’t have a mass-market EV, and it is short on range and long on charging time.
Had they bought Tesla even five years ago, they’d have acquired tech well beyond what they’re introducing for ‘23, and we both know that Toyota would implement Lexus quality standards as the first order of business. There would be no damage to their reputation.
I was assuming you were talking about a current Toyota acquisition of Tesla and not five years ago. I am an ICE Luddite so don't know (or care) what a bZ4X is. Toyota has a reputation of not making too many mistakes. Tesla OTOH is a world class leader in that category. Their business model sucks big time as well.
IMHO all EV's have incompetent range and excessive charging times. Imagine what the lines at CostCo would look like if everyone waited 20-30 minutes for everyone in front of you to "fill up". If they weren't so expensive they might be useful as a commuter. But even if that were the case you can bet that within a very short amount of time the electric providers would find a way to jack your nighttime charging rates. Or you work nights. Or your dwelling doesn't have charging facilities. Or your econobox tires go from $400/set to over $1,200. I could go on and on.
I'm not qualified to compare the a rebadging/reengineering costs of a Tesla into a Toyota but if I were a Board member or stockholder I'd go positively frantic should that suggestion be made. As many car companies have already discovered, your brand is the single most valuable asset your company owns. Once lost it won't be coming back anytime soon. Tesla sounds like a bridge too far.
And don't park that EV in your attached garage!
For one thing; just look at Tesla per share stock price verses Toyota. Yesterday Toyota finished at $155.44 per share, verses Tesla at 711.12. On a couple occasions, Tesla shares were over $1,100 per share, where Toyota has barely crossed $200.
For whatever one thinks about EV's, Tesla is the leader in EV sales by a mile. Assuming one doesn't take time sensitive cross country trips, EV's are a great commuting alternative, not only for the much lower cost to fuel the vehicle, but little need for maintenance.
Poo-pooing EV's because many don't have AM radio? Total 'geezer-thinking'.
Yeah, but in a way, we're already headed there.
How many people used one cable TV system (1970s through the 1990s) and put up with it, rather than stick with OTA? They'd complain, but theyd pay for it just the same. Right now the percentage of music consumers using Paid Subscription Services like Pandora and Spotify is increasing, not decreasing. That's the new model. Same with NFL games, they're veering people towards the subscription model.
Same thing with the tendency towards the subscription model for lots of software. And even books are headed for the subscription model.
If your example occurs, people will complain, but they'll still pay. It may increase music piracy, though.
Here, meaning Radiodiscussions.com, is a (no offense Frank or David) molecule in a swimming pool as compared with the vast majority of media consumers that make up the entire pool. Just look at many posts; denial or resistance to smartphones, EV's, or any form of tech past 1990. Instead, many here want to just ruminate about the good ol' days, whether those good ol' days actually existed or not.
Millennials and Gen-Z live on their phones, not AM radio. As long as their cheap car comes with Apple CarPlay, they're golden.
My point, which answered your initial question of “do most people paying serious money for a new car, even care?”…
(screen goes all wavy, harp music plays)
A decent percentage of the people looking to buy a Tesla, one of the two Benz EVs, the Porsche Taycan, Audi e-Tron, VW ID.4, or any new Volvo (the sum total of cars sold in the USA today without AM radios) are likely 50+.
…was that the only cars for sale in America today without AM radios aren’t cheap and aren’t primarily being sold to Millennials and Gen-Z.
If I had known two people would miss the phrase "five years ago" in my comment "I expected Toyota to buy him out five years ago as an easy entry into the EV business", I would have put it in bold.
In 2017, Tesla's stock price average was $62.81 a share. Toyota's was $115.06.
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Landtuna, I've communicated with you on this group long enough to know I won't change your mind.
This is just for factual accuracy for anyone who reads this:
Apart from a couple of dedicated "city cars" (Mini-e, Mazda MX-30), plus the ancient-design Nissan Leaf, every EV on sale today has a range of at least 240 miles on a charge (the AWD versions of the Toyota bZ4x and its cousin, the Subaru Solterra, drop to 222 miles).
Some significantly exceed that. The BMW i4 gets 301 miles. The Hyundai Ioniq 5 gets 303. The Ford Mustang Mach-3 gets 305. The Kia EV6 gets 310. The Rivian R1T truck 314. The Rivian R1S SUV 316. The Ford F-150 Lightning pickup 320. The BMW iX 324. The Hummer EV 329. The Tesla Model Y gets 330 miles. The Tesla Model X 348. The Mercedes-Benz EQS gets 350. The Tesla Model 3 gets 358 miles. The Tesla Model S gets 405. And the Lucid Air gets 520 miles on a single charge.
As for charging times, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6 can recharge from 10% to 80% in 19 minutes. Expect to see charging times drop as more EVs adopt the 800v internal charging system Hyundai, Kia, Porsche and Audi have. Most are expected to do that by the 2025 model year (the '23s are already arriving, so it's not that far off).
The Costco comparison won't apply until you have as many EVs showing up at charging stations as ICE cars show up at Costco's fuel pumps on a typical day. That's a ways off. And it's why charging stations for the mid-and-long-term future are being designed to have substantially more chargers than most gas stations have pumps.
As for expense---true about some, not about others. The average car in the US costs $40,000 today. There are at least half a dozen electrics that start under that price and fall to $30,000 or below after $7,500-$9,000 in incentives. At nine grand, a $49,000 EV falls to the price of an average new car.
As a former Arizonan, I would put nothing past APS (the local electric utility) in terms of rates, so I'll consider that one a reasonable fear, Landtuna.
Also a fair point on tires. Actually, it's probably closer to $1,500 or $1,600 for a set of four. Some, if not all of that cost can be offset by the lower maintenance costs of an EV.
And finally, as for the fire threat Landtuna implies, EVs catch fire at a lower rate than gasoline vehicles. The worst? Hybrids, which have both the battery and a tank of gasoline:
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