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Lawmakers look to require AM radio in new cars despite automakers' pushback

chicago.suntimes.com

10 points by TMWNN · 9 comments

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paulryanrogers

> ...require automakers to include AM radio in new vehicles at no additional cost to consumers.

Mandating features at no cost to customers is like trying to argue with math. They aren't going to sell the cars at a loss. They'll just raise all vehicles by the cost of the radios, and it'll be impossible to prove without line item pricing.

  • horsawlarway

    Yes. The intent is not that AM radio be "free" in the abstract. It's that charging for it means it's an optional upgrade.

    One which consumers likely won't buy.

    They don't care if the sticker price goes up by the cost of the am radio. They care that manufacturers install it, and don't make it optional.

    And they don't care because it's like $5 worth of parts (honestly probably less).

    • 0cf8612b2e1e

      Are FM radios made which don’t include AM?

      Can they produce a car which includes a radio that is practically useless because the vehicle gives off so much electric noise?

      • pseudohadamard

        It's not just the radios, it's the antennas as well, a ~1MHz antenna is very different to a ~100MHz antenna.

        Gosh if only there was some sort of widely distributed network with transmitters all over the place that could get information to portable devices that people carried with them at all times and which can be woken up remotely even if they're otherwise asleep/turned off, we wouldn't need to push this obsolete century-old technology with a vague justification of "emergencies".

  • rcxdude

    The point is to make sure every car has an AM radio installed, because it is still useful in emergencies. It's also not a particularly hard thing to do, it's the kind of thing that has for ages been squeezed into the corner of mobile phone radio chips and often just not hooked up in software.

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