If your car is being flooded, you aren't going to open the glove box for anything. Getting yourself and your passengers out and onto safe ground is the only thing you'll be worrying about. That radio will be just taking up space.
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Saving AM Radio
- Thread starter BruceB
- Start date
More than 1,700 posts. Have we saved AM radio yet?
No, but the wake has been well attended.
They haven't. They had a chance, they had enough votes, but didn't do it.
And was sorely in need of some booze.
Not sure if you're being serious or not...but if you are being serious, I'm not so sure.
Because the new fly in the ointment is Trump's new best bud, Elon Musk. Tesla is far and away the biggest manufacturer of cars that don't have AM tuners in the United States, and I'm guessing he wouldn't be too thrilled to have the government order Tesla to start including those AM tuners in his cars going forward.
Tesla has previously claimed that the electric motors in its vehicles interfere with AM reception, but that's just a feeble excuse on their part. The AM section in my Hyundai Ioniq 6 EV works about as well (which is to say, not very well) as has the AM section of the last four or five gasoline-powered cars that I owned. Likewise for the AM section in the car that I owned just prior to that Ioniq 6, which was the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid. If Hyundai and GM could make it work, I'm sure that Tesla could, as well.
But it will be easier for Musk to just whisper a few words in Trump's ear than to have Tesla's engineers put those AM radios back in their cars, so I'm sure that is what Musk will do.
I was kidding
@TexasTom Unfortunately, I have to agree. In fact, I feel like Musk would not only prefer to get the AM bill killed for good, he would probably push in its place a bill that mandates radios in cars be eliminated altogether, probably in favor of something based on his technology. Starlink, perhaps? And of course it would require a subscription.
Of course, we all know that traditional radio as we know it (AM and FM) would be doomed if anything like that happens, and under normal conditions, it most likely wouldn't. But these conditions are anything but normal.
c
Of course, we all know that traditional radio as we know it (AM and FM) would be doomed if anything like that happens, and under normal conditions, it most likely wouldn't. But these conditions are anything but normal.
c
I doubt that Musk gives a damn about radios at all. This tings of lower level management decisions; remember, the no longer consider radio and even satellite to be to today’s technology.
The convincing argument is that OTA radio is free while everything else has fees. But then the counter argument is that the average car is over $20 thousand so “they can afford it”.
Yeah, pretty soon, new Teslas will have pervasive, always on 5G, and nothing else.
Nobody seems to care anymore. In pursuit of infinite growth, big corporations are never going to stop finding new ways to exploit people out of their money, so disabling everything free in favor of things that require expensive subscriptions just to get the same, old thing the free OTA platforms offered, but worse makes perfect sense.
c
Elon may have Trump's ear. He may not have all of Congress's, especially as the bill was bipartisan in nature.
There are over 4K AM radio stations in the US, still on the air, so it is indeed an important subject.
There are probably a similar number of public radio stations on the air (the CPB website says they serve 1220 public radio stations), and public radio is considered a serious subject for the same reason that AM radio is a serious radio subject -- thousands of stations, millions of listeners, and both are important public media resources, for different reasons.
The bill to mandate inclusion of AM reception in cars was bi-partisan for a reason -- politicians on both sides of the aisle think AM is still an important media resource.
I wonder how many of those same politicians have listened to an AM station in the past six months (exclusive of when a station interviewed them and they tun in to hear themselves)
I have no idea. How many politicians listen to radio, period? I'm sure some of the politicians in DC have listened to the FM news station at least. Either way, it doesn't matter how many of them have actually listened, if they think that AM is an important media resource, just as many politicians think public radio is an important media resource.
And those numbers will plummet if AM isn't mandated in cars? I don't think so.
Maybe there's some lobbying involved?