David, thank you. There's the answer. Multiply the manufacturer cost of an AM antenna by the number of cars that won't have them and you have the cost savings for the manufacturer by not having AM in a vehicle.
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
In a future filled with electric cars, AM radio may be left behind (off-topic)
- Thread starter DMK
- Start date
What you're overlooking is how the industry is responding to the mandate, which is positively. One in eight vehicles sold in the United States is sold in California. It's why California emissions standards (after a period of building "49-state" cars and "California emissions" cars) became what manufacturers built to.
Also, on October 28, the European Union announced it's going forward with a mandate that mirrors California. Same basic parameters---no new internal combustion passenger vehicles sold after 2035, with a carve-out for plug-in hybrids with 50 miles or more of pure electric range.
Last year, with sales constrained by supply-chain issues, 10-million new passenger cars were sold in the EU.
With those numbers, it's unlikely that manufacturers would continue production of very many ICE vehicles even if California were the lone state with a 2035 cutoff, and it's unlikely that will be the case. In fact, 17 other states are weighing adopting the California standard at this moment, with only two of those (Pennsylvania and Colorado) considered probable "no" votes.
17 states weigh adopting California's electric car mandate
There really is no manufacturer resistance to speak of. Many, in fact, will beat the deadline and won't have gasoline or diesel-powered passenger vehicles in production well before 2035:
Every Automaker’s EV Plans Through 2035 And Beyond
As for the power grid, it's worth noting that 80 percent of all EV charging happens at home, 30 to 40% of those home charging units are powered by solar, and publicly-owned utilities are not part of the grid that's in trouble (which is largely PG&E's). That includes the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power and the Sacramento Metropolitan Utilities District (SMUD):
MAP: California Communities That Supply Their Own Power | KQED
And, the thing everyone forgets---they don't all charge at once. Most EVs now provide upwards of 250 miles on a charge, matching or exceeding the range available on a full tank of gas. Most people don't go to the gas station and fill their tank every day.
But---with an EV, you can plug in and keep your vehicle continually topped off every night. It's a small amount of electricity if you've just driven 40 miles, but IF there's a massive blackout, you've got the electric equivalent of a full tank. And, in a blackout, gas pumps don't work, so you're actually a bit ahead of your neighbor.
Having now driven two dozen different EVs for a week each as part of my work as an automotive journalist, and not having charging beyond a 110V extension cable in my garage, I can tell you the weak link at the moment is public charging, which is essential not only for road trips but for people living in multi-unit dwellings.
There aren't enough of them, and incidences of rolling up to one to find it out of service are way too common. But there's a lot of action on that front. Here's a link to a Google search of the most recent news:
public ev charging stations
And finally, we're talking about 12 years, not a week from Thursday. It's worth remembering that 12 years ago there were exactly ZERO electric vehicles on the market, and ZERO public charging stations (unless they were leftovers from the GM EV-1 experiement in the 1990s). Today, there are 34 EVs for sale in the US:
Guide to Every EV for Sale in U.S.
...and 144,000 public charging stations:
Interactive: EV Charging Stations Across the U.S. Mapped
All of that has happened since the Tesla Model S went on sale 10 and a half years ago. We have that much time, plus a year and a half, to build out the infrastructure.
In the meantime, you can buy whatever you want, and after 2035, if you still don't like it, you can buy used (three times as many used cars are sold every year as new).
That figure seems really high. Might be attainable in the southwest where it's sunny most of the time, but how does that play in a region like the PNW where it's overcast 6 months of the year?
Also, it seems like it will be a long time before the existing ICE fleet will be out of service even if all new sales are EVs in another 10 years (something I'm skeptical of). Maybe here in the northeast where not many vehicles last 15 years before they rust out, but southern areas where rust isn't a problem there are still 30 year old daily drivers. Are these people going to be hung out to dry and forced to replace them?
It tells me that the FCC could read the writing on the wall, and tossed a life preserver to current AM station owners to allow their stations to transition to a band that people still actually listen to. I don't see any scenario where AM itself could be "revived". That bus left the station 40+ years ago.
Storage is one solution, but if we're talking about places that literally don't see the sun for months on end, then, no, solar's not logical and that power would be coming from that area's grid.
You may have missed my earlier post, where I estimated that we're probably talking 25-35 years before the existing ICE fleet is out of service (it would take 16 years of back-to-back record vehicle sales if we started today)---and even then, not totally (I'm guessing 5 percent or less will keep their ICE vehicles running that far out).
Nobody is talking about forced replacement or the inability to buy used ICE vehicles. How many people with 30 year old daily drivers make the wholesale jump to a brand new car and the payments that go with?
And another factor---how old are those people going to be when all this rolls around? I'll be two and a half months shy of my 79th birthday when the California and EU policy takes effect. If I'm right about a 25-35 year time period to retire 95-ish percent of the ICE fleet, I'd be 91 to 101.
A large number of the people most vocally opposed to the change are older than I am. And there will be 12 years worth of people who aren't old enough to drive now who'll have their licenses and be new car consumers---who are entering that phase of their lives with EVs not being a foreign concept.
Last edited:
Adding to your point; for better or worse the Commission has become less of a regulatory agency, and more of a way for Congress to find revenue opportunities by auctioning off spectrum. Since the AM broadcast band has no use for anything other than a legacy form of media, there's zero motivation for the government to be responsible for 'saving' the AM broadcast band. As BigA mentioned; the Commission threw interested AM broadcasters some water wings in the form of FM translators, but water wings won't do you much good in the middle of the Pacific when sharks starting circling.
The day after I read that KORL and KKNE had surrendered their licenses, KKNE applied to reinstate theirs! I presume that they suddenly found a buyer.
I absolutely agree -- leasing an EV is definitely the way to go.
There's no need to worry about how the electricity is generated, or consider the impact of mining the lithium, manganese, cobalt, graphite, steel, and nickel that goes into the batteries. By leasing, you'll never get a $25,000 bill if the battery dies, and the ultimate responsibility of discarding the EV along with its half-ton+ toxic battery into the landfill falls solely on the lessor.
EVs are fast and fun. Leasing is a great way to enjoy one guilt free!
In my personal case; the majority of the EV charging will be via 22 solar panels mounted to the South-facing roof of my garage. An investment that is estimated to pay for itself in a little less than ten years.
Regarding about the materials in Li-PO or Lithium Ion batteries; a good friend who works in the energy sector was talking about a potential cottage industry recycling hybrid and EV batteries back into new EV batteries. Reports are it's expected to get better, but as of today; less than 5% of batteries are even attempted to be recycled.
Like anything else new, costs will come down, as R&D costs are absorbed and especially as older battery materials are recycled back into new batteries.
Has nothing to do with guilt. The technology of EV's is evolving much more rapidly than internal combustion vehicles have. With anything tech, that means the device/vehicle devalues faster. An example are PC's and laptops. Early on the expectation was to keep a PC for ten years before expected replacement. Cell phones were five years or more. Now the cost of PC's and laptops is so low that the life of one is estimated at 2.5 to 3 years. Smartphone manufacturers estimate users will replace their phone every two years. Replacement rates like that were unheard of even ten years ago.
Didn't realize you were an automotive journalist. What's your take on EVs (other than the charging issues)? Do you find those huge monitor screens stuck in the middle of the dash like an afterthought distracting? Just from photos I've seen online it seems they would be. Do any models stick with the KISS philosophy when it comes to controls...ie logical, intuitive or do they all require you to page thru menus on the touchscreen to perform simple tasks like adjust the heat, mirrors, radio, etc?
These days one big touch-screen LED is actually cheaper than individual knobs and switches. That's why automakers do it -- at least until buyers complain, their JD Power score goes down, and they add back some physical controls to next year's model. (Like Honda did, returning a real volume control knob to their radios after customers complained about having to use the touch screen to adjust the volume.)
And it's fun when the computer running it crashes, causing you to be unable to change the station or turn off the radio, even after shutting off the ignition and locking the doors:
Oldbones, first, the screen is not an EV-specific issue. Some of the biggest screens you've ever seen are in gasoline-powered pickup trucks:
Lost In Translation: The 2022 Toyota Tundra Capstone
Domination Determination: The 2021 Ford F-150 4X4 Supercrew
30 Minutes With: The 2021 RAM 1500 TRX
While some very reasonably-sized ones are in EVs:
More For Less: The 2023 Chevrolet Bolt EUV
Perspective: The 2023 Mini Cooper SE
As for distraction, that's always going to depend on how distractible an individual driver is. I'm very road-focused---a trait I learned from pilots. I don't turn my head to talk to a passenger.
An advantage to larger screens is that, in navigation mode (either the vehicle's or Apple Maps via Apple CarPlay), I'm able to glance at the map quickly and see where I am, which is much tougher to do with a smaller screen (in fact, it gets harder the smaller the screen is).
Some manufacturers (Tesla, Volvo) do bury most of their settings in menus and I don't like that. Others keep often-used functions (volume/tuning, air/heat, seat heating/cooling, defrosters) out of the screen with physical buttons.
There are two schools of thought in EVs right now---one is "let's build a spaceship and make everything as different as possible":
https://www.mikehagertycars.com/post/hat-trick-the-2023-genesis-gv60-performance
The other is "let's take a car and just electrify it---eliminate the intimidation factor and learning curve":
https://www.mikehagertycars.com/post/one-step-closer-the-2022-hyundai-kona-electric
And the remarkable thing is that those last two cars come from the same manufacturer. BMW's doing it too---building otherworldly EVs and electrified versions of their normal cars. It'll be interesting to see which approach ends up more popular.
I hope you find that's the case. I have several friends who added solar panels to their homes, and after a few years they admitted it was a bad decision. I realize this is anecdotal and I don't know all the details. One friend moved to Newark, DE, where he says the city had incentives that made solar panels too good a deal to pass up. Then, this past summer, every sunny day resulted in a power outage because the panels were feeding too much power back to the grid! He said you looked at the forcast and you knew what was coming. It's been fixed now, but there's still some learning to be done in this area.
True.
But hopefully that trend is about to reverse. The EU is mandating, for example, that cell phones will need to have removable batteries and Apple will need to replace the Lightning port with USB-C in order to establish universal chargers by the end of 2024. Toxic waste is a huge problem -- bigger that the lack of AM Radio (to get back to this topic.)
Granted I'm not your average solar consumer. Not only am I an engineer by trade, I've done a ton of research on solar and have designed my entire system, personally applied for all the permits. Unlike some who have been sold by solar vendors on selling power back to the grid as the primary motivation, my design is greedy. The power I won't be using to charge my wife's EV, will be charging battery banks with ganged inverters to keep the power going in the garage at night, during cloudy days, etc. I have no intent on selling power back. My savings calculations are purely based on providing power to lights, HVAC, chargers, air compressor, power tools, and whatever 120/220VAC devices powered in my garage. In fact, the garage is disconnected from utility power. There's a longer explanation I went this way, which I won't bother going into here.
I agree that in the scheme of things Antique Modulation receivers are a drop in a greater ocean of world concerns. I wouldn't count on electronic devices having a longer useful lifespan in our lifetime. If anything, obsolescence over an increasing lesser periods of time more likely. The world is going to a subscription model. Get used to it.But hopefully that trend is about to reverse. The EU is mandating, for example, that cell phones will need to have removable batteries and Apple will need to replace the Lightning port with USB-C in order to establish universal chargers by the end of 2024. Toxic waste is a huge problem -- bigger that the lack of AM Radio (to get back to this topic.)
Yes, I think the issue was that the sell-back was not what was originally promised.
But with the subscription model, the hardware is less of an issue. Cars are built to deliver all kinds of features, from auto-dimming headlights to turbo-power. Just enabled them with a credit card! No need to buy new hardware when $$$ can let you enhance the old stuff.
So wasteful. We try to be eco-friendly yet we fail and there goes our home.
Well, let's not underestimate the automobile industry's love of planned obsolescence. Even under a subscription model, your 2023 vehicle will only be capable of so many functions and features, and they will absolutely come up with more that are
"not compatible with vehicles built before (date)."
The electronics industry -- especially the phone industry -- lives for planned obsolescence. That's why I have a total of 7 cell phones, only one of them capable of making or taking calls and texts (I think some of the old flip phones will make 911 calls, though). My perfectly working 3G cell phone that was obsoleted last year can still be used for MP3s, for streaming off the web, and used as a camera, etc. so that one isn't a total loss.
And most people probably don't keep their old phones, or try to make them work for other tasks. They just toss them in the landfill, right next to all those blown, toxic, mercury-filled CFL bulbs that were supposed to save the environment.
I don't think that EVs not having AM in them will make a difference to the actual AM band. The band itself, just like OTA radio in general, has a lifetime, and the high number of gas powered vehicles with AM radios will last as long as AM stations do. Whether EVs have AM or not is really a non-issue, except to AM radio fans, who can always opt for one of the EVs or hybrids that has working AM.
And most people probably don't keep their old phones, or try to make them work for other tasks. They just toss them in the landfill, right next to all those blown, toxic, mercury-filled CFL bulbs that were supposed to save the environment.
I don't think that EVs not having AM in them will make a difference to the actual AM band. The band itself, just like OTA radio in general, has a lifetime, and the high number of gas powered vehicles with AM radios will last as long as AM stations do. Whether EVs have AM or not is really a non-issue, except to AM radio fans, who can always opt for one of the EVs or hybrids that has working AM.
But even the subscription model has its limits. Because new OSs and new apps often need updated hardware. No amount of subsiption money is going to make Window 15 work on a computer with hardware designed to max out on Windows 7.
- Status