Congress fights to keep AM radio in cars

Emergency communications & public safety

• Many argue AM’s main value is as a resilient emergency backstop: long range, simple infrastructure, and car-powered receivers when grid, internet, and cell fail.
• Cited scenarios: hurricanes, blizzards in mountain passes, wildfires, major blackouts, evacuations where roadside signs direct drivers to AM advisory stations.
• AM’s low frequency gives large coverage with few transmitters; stations often have backup generators. Travelers’ Information Stations and FEMA’s emergency network are built on this.
• Critics say households could just keep cheap portable or crank radios and disaster “go bags,” but others respond most people don’t prepare, so embedding a radio in cars is more reliable.

Market vs regulation

• One camp: let automakers drop AM; almost no one uses it, and “vote with your wallet.”
• Counter: for low-cost, low-visibility safety features, market pressure is weak; no one will switch car brands over AM, yet the public-good / national-security value is high.
• Comparisons are made to mandated seatbelts, first-aid kits, and UHF tuners in TVs.

Technical characteristics: AM, FM, and digital

• AM advantages: very long range, simple receivers (down to crystal radios), and “good enough” fuzzy audio that remains intelligible at fringe reception.
• FM and digital: better audio, less local interference, but shorter range and often “all-or-nothing” behavior when signals weaken, though some argue modern codecs plus error correction can outperform analog at low SNR.
• Debate over whether digital radio standards (DAB, HD, MA3, 5G broadcast, etc.) should replace analog AM; supporters cite efficiency and richer metadata, opponents stress loss of extreme robustness and universal compatibility.

EV interference and implementation cost

• Automakers claim EV drive electronics create AM-band EMI, making in-car AM unusable.
• Some commenters say the silicon for AM+FM is essentially free and the real cost is EMI mitigation; they argue vehicles should meet stricter emission limits anyway.
• Others note some hybrids/EVs manage acceptable AM, implying it’s an engineering/expense choice, not impossibility.

Alternatives & international context

• Alternatives discussed: FM-based alerts, NOAA weather band in cars, satellite radio, internet streaming, and cell-based emergency alerts.
• Skeptics note cell towers and broadband often fail quickly in disasters, and satellite radio is subscription, infrastructure-heavy, and not widely used for public alerts.
• Europe and some countries (Norway, Switzerland) are phasing out FM in favor of DAB; AM is already gone or marginal in parts of Europe and Canada, reinforcing that this debate is very US-specific.

Politics, content, and actual usage

• AM today is seen as dominated by talk, sports, and often right-wing or religious programming; some view the mandate as benefiting those broadcasters.
• Many urban and younger drivers report never using AM (or any broadcast radio), relying entirely on phones; others—especially in rural or disaster-prone areas—say they still use AM regularly and would refuse cars without it.