Senator Urges Automakers to Keep Making Cars with AM Radio (boston.com) 320
The Boston Globe reports that U.S. Senator Ed. Markey just sent a letter to more than 20 car manufacturers asking them to continue including AM radios in future car models — including electric vehicles:
Some EV manufacturers have raised concerns even as far back as 2016 about how the battery power of an EV can interfere with AM radio signals. However, Markey addressed these concerns saying, "car manufacturers appear to have developed innovative solutions to this problem."
"The last time I listened to AM radio was in the late 1970s," writes long-time Slashdot reader non-e-moose. "And then it was mostly because there were either no FM stations in reception range, or I was riding my bicycle and only had a transistor radio."
But the Senator sees it differently: AM radio has long been an important source of information for consumers. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly 90 percent of Americans ages 12 and older — totaling hundreds of millions of people — listened to AM or FM radio each week, higher than the percentage that watch television (56 percent) or own a computer (77 percent).... Moreover, 33 percent of new car buyers say that AM radio is a very important feature in a vehicle — higher than dedicated Wi-Fi (31 percent), SiriusXM satellite radio (27 percent), and personal assistants such as Google Assistant (12 percent) and Amazon Alexa (9 percent). In other words, broadcast AM and FM radio remain an essential vehicle feature for consumers.
Moreover, broadcast AM radio, in particular, is a critical mechanism for government authorities to communicate with the public during natural disasters, extreme weather events, and other emergencies. AM radio operates at lower frequencies and has longer wavelengths than FM radio, so AM radio waves more easily pass through solid objects. As a result, AM radio signals can travel long distances, making them well-suited for broadcasting emergency alerts....
Despite innovations such as the smartphone and social media, AM/FM broadcast radio remains the most dependable, cost-free, and accessible communication mechanism for public officials to communicate with the public during times of emergency. As a result, any phase-out of broadcast AM radio could pose a significant communication problem during emergencies.... Given AM radio's importance for emergency communications and continued consumer demand, I urge your company to maintain the feature in its new vehicles...
"The last time I listened to AM radio was in the late 1970s," writes long-time Slashdot reader non-e-moose. "And then it was mostly because there were either no FM stations in reception range, or I was riding my bicycle and only had a transistor radio."
But the Senator sees it differently: AM radio has long been an important source of information for consumers. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly 90 percent of Americans ages 12 and older — totaling hundreds of millions of people — listened to AM or FM radio each week, higher than the percentage that watch television (56 percent) or own a computer (77 percent).... Moreover, 33 percent of new car buyers say that AM radio is a very important feature in a vehicle — higher than dedicated Wi-Fi (31 percent), SiriusXM satellite radio (27 percent), and personal assistants such as Google Assistant (12 percent) and Amazon Alexa (9 percent). In other words, broadcast AM and FM radio remain an essential vehicle feature for consumers.
Moreover, broadcast AM radio, in particular, is a critical mechanism for government authorities to communicate with the public during natural disasters, extreme weather events, and other emergencies. AM radio operates at lower frequencies and has longer wavelengths than FM radio, so AM radio waves more easily pass through solid objects. As a result, AM radio signals can travel long distances, making them well-suited for broadcasting emergency alerts....
Despite innovations such as the smartphone and social media, AM/FM broadcast radio remains the most dependable, cost-free, and accessible communication mechanism for public officials to communicate with the public during times of emergency. As a result, any phase-out of broadcast AM radio could pose a significant communication problem during emergencies.... Given AM radio's importance for emergency communications and continued consumer demand, I urge your company to maintain the feature in its new vehicles...
Tuner chip ... (Score:5, Interesting)
The tuner chip is probably 50 cents and does both anyway.
Personally, I'd be down with making the DIN slot great again. Provide a standard sized slot for the audio equipment, provide a standard interface to the steering wheel/voice/screen controls, allow the customer to be able to add what they need at will.
The trend of integrated everything, run by the same screen or (worse), crappy-ass capacitative controls that are useless in cold weather, needs to die gurgling. That's one of the reasons why I prefer the Bolt EV (not EwwwV) over offerings from Tesla or VW -- it still has an interior without the ergonomic sins of those cars. Make a normal car that's electric; stop trying so hard to be fashionable or modern for the sake of modernity.
Re: Tuner chip ... (Score:2)
Modular is best indeed.
My husband's 2017 Bolt EV features an external audio input, also. Just 1/8". No DIN. But it allowed for the installation of an aftermarket CD player. The car of course supports AM and FM from the factory.
There are a lot of bugs in the infotainment unit, though.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Tuner chip ... (Score:2)
GM isn't doing OTA updates on the Bolt. There are dealer software updates, but they are only for major stuff like recalls. I haven't seen any infotainment bugs fixed. The most annoying bug has to do with radio presets, actually. Sometimes you get duped presets, and you can't switch preset with the physical paddle, only with the touch screen. Only seems to happen with classical KDFC on FM. Other stations work fine.
Re: (Score:3)
The problem with that is money -- as it the automakers' money. They can't rip you off in five years selling you an entirely new car with an entirely new infotainment system (or OTA updates) if you have an option to "opt out."
Who the hell buys a new car for a new infotainment system?
I’ll certainly look for that as a feature, and its capabilities will impact my decision, but it will have zero to do with me buying a new car in the first place!
Re: Tuner chip ... (Score:5, Informative)
That doesn't seem to be the case, given that most of them support Android Auto and Apple Carplay.
Those two are the new DIM slot. People just want a screen that their phone can display on, and use their existing cellular plan with instead of paying a subscription to the car manufacturer.
I'm sure they will be happy to sell you over-priced updates, but once you have Android Auto/Carplay there really isn't much incentive to spend any money updating the built in system.
Re: (Score:3)
For some definition of "people". There is no reason you can't have both.
My husband's 2017 Bolt EV has :
1) Android auto / Apple carplay, that only works with the USB cable, not wireless.
2) AM/FM tuner built-in
3) a 1/8" external input audio jack for devices not built-in to the car
Even though he's got a very nice Android phone, he never uses the Android auto. He uses Bluetooth only for phone calls.
I know he listens to a lot of radio on it.
And he uses the CD player for his 15,000 Vietnamese music CD collection,
actually... (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of the vendors that used to make AM receiver chips have stopped and only sell FM receiver chips now - so it's a good thing no chips are required to make a good AM receiver.
There's actually a dirty little secret here: The FCC has, as a basic justification for its existence, the duty to protect the AM, FM, and TV transmission bands from interference, and this is actually what killed some computer lines like the Radio Shack TRS-80 series. Back in the late '70s to early '80s the FCC upped its enforcement and regulations and both the Apple II and the TRS-80 interfered too much. To see what Atari did to pass the tests, get a look at all the metal under the hood of an old Atari 400 - prepare to be stunned if you've never seen it. Apple went to the Apple IIe (with RF coating added to the inside of the case) to get into compliance, but Radio Shack did not get their systems into compliance (probably lacked funding to do the engineering). Remember, THOSE computers were only running at a couple of MHz (NOBODY then was even imagining a microprocessor at gigahertz speeds). The modern PC is a far worse offender, but the huge PC makers came up with a work-around for the regulations (NOT an actual honest solution) - they have the clock circuits on modern very fast CPUs jitter about the desired frequency, thus scattering the noise enough to get through the specific FCC tests, but this scheme does indeed leave the PC cluttering-up the AM radio bands. There's also loopholes in the regs for digital noise emitted by circuits aboard vehicles (which cars ARE, of course). As a result, it can be hard to get a good AM signal near a modern PC or near the computers in cars (which makes it hard to make a good AM radio receiver in a modern car). Car makers would love to eliminate these receivers, in part because it saves a tiny bit of cash in a low-profit margin business, but also because it's difficult to make and integrate a good one that will not produce consumer complaints. Oh, and the FCC has essentially ignored the PC clock jitter scam because an entire industry which is vital to the nation has no practical work-around and is TECHNICALLY in compliance even though it is in violation, in spirit.
Re:actually... (Score:4, Informative)
You're about half right.
It is often stated that Radio Shack was forced by the FCC to recall the Model I. That is incorrect and based on a misunderstanding of the FCC rules. The new FCC regulations applied only to hardware manufactured after January 1, 1981. Any non-certified product manufactured before that date could still be sold until July 1, 1982 as long as it displayed [a disclaimer] label:
A longer version of the story can be found at http://www.trs-80.org/why-was-... [trs-80.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, when I say ugly I mostly mean "I really don't want this thing sticking out like a sore thumb in the dashboard of a car I'm still making payments on." Once a vehicle reaches jalopy age, a radio chock full of dorky looking super-bright blue LEDs kind of fits the motif.
AM radio is the emergency backup (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: AM radio is the emergency backup (Score:3, Insightful)
One major power outage later like Texas being black for a month in the winter and you'll figure out what works.
Re: AM radio is the emergency backup (Score:4, Interesting)
But it can't be some little hurricane that causes a weeks outages and a few billion dollars of damage. That'll be forgotten 24 hours after the power is restored. We need major infrastructure going down- affecting entire states - for like a month or more. That's the only thing that'll get people's attention.
Re: (Score:2)
Our society has become so accustomed to the Internet working everywhere that we've forgotten about the simpler, more robust ways of getting messages out.
The part that is even more concerning, is the removal of options with regards to mass communication.
We've already seen how social media can be absolutely abused on behalf of every political party. We shouldn't assume it's that hard to buy enough major ISPs to control and censor every narrative, especially when every other option to communicate is eradicated.
Re: (Score:2)
Even so, isn't a hand-cranked flashlight+radio a better emergency information device than relying on your car?
I support keeping AM radio alive, but I don't necessarily think cars need to have it, as long as there's something functionally equal like free satellite radio. Both favor the same (non-music) programming because both sound like shit.
The main down side of eliminating AM radios in cars would be that the talk and news content would migrate over to FM, crowding out an already paltry selection of music
Re: (Score:2)
It’s only good in an emergency if people actually listen to it.
I struggle to imagine how bad things would have to be before I thought to find an old radio and crank it along a bunch of AM stations looking for news.
Re:AM radio is the emergency backup (Score:5, Interesting)
There's nothing robust about getting a message out to just cars.
Yes their is. Note every crisis everywhere where people evacuate: they don't ride their bicycles out. They drive. Note how many "homeless" resort to vans and RVs. Car are durable and provide shelter and people rely on them when they're desperate.
The US built an important part of its public emergency system around AM. There are designated AM stations with exclusive high power output limits. The idea is that if most of our infrastructure were destroyed some surviving fraction of these stations could still broadcast. If they use full power — especially at night — the whole planet would hear them due to the ionosphere. So even if you think that relying on a car for emergency radio is somehow flawed (it isn't) it's still important to preserve AM as a viable medium. The obvious way to do this is to see that cars continue having AM capability and remain commercially viable.
The US government mandates practically everything about how cars sold in the US are built. Markey et al. shouldn't be "urging" anything. US DOT should just mandate it for public safety reasons: put the $0.50 of parts in the car or fuck off with your foreign made shit boxes. Case closed.
Necessary some places... (Score:2, Insightful)
There are huge areas of the United States where streaming and/or FM radio simply don't exist. I would postulated that there are probably as many square miles where that is true, as there where it isn't. Unfortunately for the few people in those areas, they represent perhaps 1% of the US population. Should we require Automakers to continue putting in AM radio to support that 1%? I kinda have a problem with that....
Re: (Score:2)
Pittsburgh and Las Vegas have never had a full FM market... and XM provides some "first local service" to those areas.
Re:Necessary some places... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The current 7 inch display Delco radios have software updating features to handle any changes in radio protocols. The $500 Double-DIN touchscreen radios are almost equal for older cars that didn't come with the FM-HD/XM/AM radios.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Necessary some places... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention it allows use without looking. An extremely important feature for any device that you're likely to operate while *also* guiding thousands of pounds of rolling death down the road.
Between wanting to keep my eyes on the road while driving, and wanting to keep my night vision while driving after dark, I'm firmly opposed to any usage of touch screens for basic features in a car.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Radio controls on the steering wheel are an old idea that's still better than touch screens. You might have to glance down to initially find the button, but at least you don't have to take your hands off the wheel.
HD Radio Simulcasts (Score:2)
Most AM radio station snow have either FM or FM-HD simulcasts with much stronger signals.
Around here Boston's Conservative Talk 1200 (WXKS) and Liberal Talk WKRO are hidden on WZLX's HD channels 100.7. Boston's NewsRadio WBZ finds a better sounding signal on Kiss 108's HD channel, WXKS-HD2.
Out of Worcester, News/Talk 580 WTAG has a local FM Repeater on 94.9, and a further reaching signal on WSRS-HD2.
In my local WFGL 960 is heard on FM at 106.1, and WPKZ 1280 is heard on 105.3.
All 6 of my AM presets have FM
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
AM's nighttime skip went away around Y2K....
Good reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't about hearing talk radio or some sort of nostalgia kick. This is about emergency communication.
AM is simple (that's why we had it first). It's simple to transmit and simple to receive. Though few remember, a graphite pencil, a safety pin, a razor blade, and an old piezo earphone will work if that's all you can get.
Basic spark gap transmitters present few requirements if you don't care about staying on your assigned frequency or in any sort of fidelity (or just do CW). In an emergency, that's fine.
It's also easy to transmit for a long distance (for example, from outside of the disaster stricken area).
Re: (Score:2)
AM gets a bad rap because it's all mono... except it also supports stereo [wikipedia.org], even HD. [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Kinda different scale (Score:2, Funny)
For contrast, the country of Austria banned the use of AM radio (or medium wave radio) in 1976, and they're still doing fine.
That's because the entire country is ten feet wide [mylifeelsewhere.com] and if you need to broadcast emergency instructions to everyone you just lean out a window and shout.
A democrat? Pushing for AM radio? (Score:2)
yes (Score:3)
Markey is quite liberal/progressive, is quite aware of Limbaugh and tried to regulate him off the air, BUT Markey's also honest and keeping an eye on the national interest. Unlike many on both the right and left, Markey is (in this subject, at least) trying to do what's best for the country.
AM radio, in the US, is vital to many people. If you ever find yourself in rural America, with no electricity, in a storm shelter, in the middle of the night and in midst of a rash of tornadoes which have ripped down tel
Native American communities depend on radio (Score:5, Informative)
AM frequencies and solid objects (Score:2)
AM frequencies travel longer distances because they can bounce off the ionosphere. FM need line of sight to the receiver.
Re: (Score:2)
The ionospheric propagation of the MW band is more of a drawback than an asset though, as it ensures you can never entirely get rid of interference merely by being far away from a station. The main benefit of AM is that the receivers can be dead simple (though they often aren't, now). FM requires a bit more skill to demodulate, and SSB needs very tight tuning to be tolerable. Neither one is terribly difficult now, but if there was something like another Carrington Event, it would be a lot easier to hack tog
Interference to AM radio? (Score:2)
Well, it is not the "battery power" that causes the interference, it is some of the electronics in the car that controls the charging and discharging of the battery. And this interference is easily cured by a few capacitors and a few RF coils wound on torroidal ferrite cores. But of course, adding those essential components would cost the manufacturer a few extra dollars, and so they
Re: (Score:2)
Cheap power supplies still spew RF. It's just that you're highly unlikely to see anything that shitty sold as a standalone power supply anymore, they're typically found integrated into devices made to the cheapest possible price point.
The manufature's debate (Score:5, Informative)
In our discussion the common view was almost no one uses AM anymore. That was certainly the case here in New Zealand where the project was undertaken. However the counter argument was in the USA that AM was still used for the broadcast of local sports, such as what they call football there. As result it was seen as product requirement and was included. Suitable consideration and testing was taken to ensure it worked with reasonable performance. The extra cost per unit was near nothing but it did add to the product development time.
Re: (Score:2)
If you're marketing primarily in North America, including AM is a good idea. An RV in particular is likely to end up in an area where there's no FM reception, but they can still get AM. However, if you make the head unit replaceable, it's not really that big of a deal if it doesn't do everything for everyone. People change the stereos in their cars all the time, I don't see why an RV would be any different.
Re: (Score:2)
I generally like vehicles with standard double DIN slots but they are becoming in
SNR (Score:3)
Predictably, plenty of voices here saying that AM is an obsolete cesspool of (mostly right wing) politics. They're leaving out that it also has local traffic, news, and will break in for anything truly earth-shattering like a disaster. The reach of AM signals is also farther than FM, even though the quality might not be as high. Receivers are so dirt simple, every kid who's interested in electronics builds one with a few simple parts--a "crystal set" doesn't even require power to pull in some stations. Transmitters are not that much more complicated.
At any rate, I defy anybody to tell me that the SNR for AM radio content isn't generally better than the Internet. If anything, the Internet fed the trolls on AM radio, not the other way around. You might just live in a sucky market, too.
There are plenty of towns with established AM stations pumping out vital information, as well as the occasional local sports play-by-play. Don't be so quick to throw it all away.
If nothing else, its simplicity makes it immune from the kind of walled garden locked-downs or suckscription models you get with other media. We're supposed to fight that, aren't we? AM is AMmunition against such control.
Radiowave communications are important (Score:3)
Emergency preparedness at least in the USA relies too much on vulnerable "high tech". And I don't mean the cell phone alert system - I mean that emergency services for "real" disasters rely too heavily on satellite communications. That "silly" scene in "Independence Day", when the Americans Morse code other nations that they are planning a counter offensive is not all that silly. If you think about it, it takes a few more brain cells to operate a radio (voice – I am not necessarily advocate using Morse code) than operating a satellite phone, but even if all infrastructure is gone, you can establish radio links, even if it means hand cranking a little generator. So, from that point of view, keeping radio communication capabilities wide-spread may seem quaint, but it is also smart. For disclosure, I usually listen to FM - better sound quality. And no data plan required ;-) But I also own some shortwave receivers, so call me biased.
Just my 2 cents.
Re: (Score:2)
I bought a radio alarm clock, a fairly modern one branded as Amazon Basics (though I didn't buy it from Amazon), and overall I am very happy with it. The display is big and dimmable, it's easy to set the time and both alarms (it has two, which is nice), and it even has a USB charging port for anything that's happy with 500mA of current. But the radio side is FM only. Just a couple years ago this would have been a bother in that I'd prefer to have my alarm give me news and weather, not music, but now there a
It needs a different antenna (Score:2)
I still listen to AM in the car, for News (Score:2)
The only actual news (not talk) station left in Southern California is KNX 1070 on the AM dial. Just news, no talk. The rest are just endless crap talk radio like 640 or 600. There's also KPBS, but that's half whimsical digressions. If I want to reliably get the news when I'm in my car, KNX is the only place I get it.
Of course if the car could do streaming from Audacity then it's available there too.
yeah (Score:2)
I've listened to KNX as my in-car goto radio station since I stumbled on it in the early '80s. It's based in Los Angeles but can be picked up on any radio as far south as the Mexican border. Unlike most SoCal AM stations, KNX seems to have not reduced its transmission power.
An Important Backup. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not so worried about war taking out comms. Russia can't manage to keep Ukrainians offline, even with hundreds of expensive cruise missiles. I'm more worried about another Carrington Event hitting the entire planet at once, rather than anything regional. I'd argue it even makes some sense to learn Morse code, since that's probably the way the very first transmissions would be sent after such an event. But I could cobble together an AM receiver in a couple hours using stuff from my spare parts bin, even i
Obligatory (Score:4)
"The last time I listened to AM radio was in the late 1970s," writes long-time Slashdot reader non-e-moose. "And then it was mostly because there were either no FM stations in reception range, or I was riding my bicycle and only had a transistor radio."
You would listen to the music on the AM Radio... [youtube.com]
statistics of AM radio listeners at 90% (Score:2)
Re:Meh (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The only real news radio--straight reporting, no political content--we can receive right now is KNX-AM out of Los Angeles, which holds a Class A license as one of the original clear-channel stations allocated under the 1928 General Order 40 band plan. Its full-time 50,000-watt non-directional signal is heard around Southern California. There are no other news radio statio
Re: (Score:3)
NPR is pretty much center right these days.
NPR is increasingly just emotional sob stories and race-obsessed drivel, which both seem to be a preoccupation of the left these days. Aside from BBC World News, which is the only thing on NPR that I can count on having any substance, there's no real coverage of economics or politics as a whole. Any coverage that exists is all about how it makes some random person feel, or how it appears in the context of a racial minority, or a combination of the two.
Re: (Score:3)
NPR is pretty much center right these days.
NPR is increasingly just emotional sob stories and race-obsessed drivel, which both seem to be a preoccupation of the left these days. Aside from BBC World News, which is the only thing on NPR that I can count on having any substance, there's no real coverage of economics or politics as a whole. Any coverage that exists is all about how it makes some random person feel, or how it appears in the context of a racial minority, or a combination of the two.
After Cheeto was elected, NPR went on a several years long rant of that stuff. After they #metoo'd Garrison Keillor and when I listened to an interview with some young lady who wanted to make using the word retarded a hate crime, I kinda gave up on them for anything but the news, and a few other things.
The World, Living on Earth is still good, You Bet Your Garden, and Wait Wait don't Tell Me is okay. The investigative reports on Sundays is interesting. But their designated victim crap is pretty cringy.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
NPR is government funded, they should be relatively neutral, although yes, they're relatively left-wing in the way they present 'the news'. If you consider NPR center-right, your personal Overton window is very far to the left.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
Yup, sports and talk radio. And by talk radio, the politically one sided shout very loud radio. We have plenty of that elsewhere.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: Meh (Score:3)
In my rural area all the right wing stuff and sports is on AM and NPR is on FM.
Re:Meh (Score:4, Informative)
AM talk radio is pretty much all right-wing Republican, but the senator in question is a Democrat.
Re:Meh (Score:4, Funny)
Today's music is designed for FM... an AM playing of most Britney songs causes the transmitter to error these days.
Re:Meh (Score:5, Informative)
Also, signs that say "TUNE TO 1620 AM FOR TRAFFIC INFORMATION" and the like are still very common, at least on the west coast.
Good luck tuning to 1620 AM for traffic information if your car manufacturer was too cheap to include an AM radio.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't want to have Google tracking and logging my movements around as I drive.
um, ED MARKEY, so... no (Score:5, Insightful)
Ed Markey [wikipedia.org] is a Democrat US Senator from Massachusetts, and was the author of the "Green New Deal" legislation in the Senate (hardly some right-wing Rush Limbaugh fan... the guy previously tried to get Limbaugh off the air).
This has nothing to do with AM radio being a right-wing place (which it is only because the left wing has never produced a show as successful as the shows the right did, NOT due to some regulation or some whacko imaginary conspiracy by the Queen of England, the Freemasons, and some gray aliens...) I may well disagree with much of Markey's agenda, but he is solidly correct here and it's refreshing to see SOMEBODY in Washington DC champion something for the actual greater good even when it seems politically sub-optimal to his partisan side. There are excellent reasons to preserve AM radio:
1. AM radio propagates far better than FM; a single, rather simple, AM transmitter can have a great range (yeah, I know it's the frequency, not the encoding, but the AM stations are on those freqs PRECISELY because AM supports the most basic receivers).
2. AM radio receivers are insanely simple and can be constructed from very basic things (no integrated circuits needed) and operated on very poor power supplies.
3. Not everybody can afford to pay monthly fees for satellite radio, or for cellphones with national coverage and unlimited data plans for streaming.
4. The nation really should have a national emergency communication scheme for talking to the people in times of major disasters that devastate infrastructure in a region.
A generic AM radio system is quite simply the best and most-basic emergency/disaster scheme available to provide the public with information. Cell phones fail when cell sites are knocked out. Cell phones and computers and tablets require huge amounts of digital infrastructure to fetch information from far away. Satellite radios are useless without the satellites, which are extremely vulnerable. You can wipe out nearly all technology within 200 miles of a place and people there can get AM radio and even build the radios.
Re: (Score:2)
AM/FM radios in phones? (Score:3)
Also, when was the last time they tested the emergency sirens in your town? Does your business do emergency evacuation drills? With Putin threatening to use nukes shouldn't we be rebuilding fallout shelters? Emergency preparedness has gone way down hill in the USA.
Re:AM/FM radios in phones? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:um, ED MARKEY, so... no (Score:5, Interesting)
your post is a fantastic example of bad faith.
1. Emergencies aren't restricted to cars, but in almost every emergency there will be people using cars for transport or shelter. Cars are also self-contained transportation and power generation.
2. Utterly irrelevant to the fact that cars are ubiquitous.
3. it's extremely relevant that car ownership is virtually ubiquitous while cell coverage and satellite subscriptions aren't.
4. so why NOT include AM in that?
Re:Meh (Score:4, Insightful)
From
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Markey is a progressive who has focused on climate change and energy policy and was chair of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming from 2007 to 2011. He is the Senate author of the Green New Deal.[1] Markey is the dean of the Massachusetts congressional delegation, having served in Congress since 1976. Markey's progressive policies have led to widespread support among young voters.[2] The Hill has called him "an icon to Gen Z activists".[3]
Re:Meh (Score:5, Informative)
Really? If you bought that bullshit small, limited, government line, I feel really sorry for you. Look at all their major issues right now. Republicans all about Big Government.
As for intrusion, for goodness sake, they've tracked women's periods [theguardian.com] in their anti-abortion crusade.
They proposed legislation to inspect children's genitals [ohiohouse.gov] if they want to play any sports.
There is absolutely nothing too intrusive for these people. Pay attention.
Re:Meh (Score:4, Interesting)
The article makes it clear that it was a spreadsheet. The 'binders' line is a joke, a reference to "binders full of women" line from the Romney 2012 campaign.
It doesn't "rebut" anything. That's a very obvious lie.
Re: (Score:2)
Keep making cars that can actually tune to (e.g.) 1620AM to get traffic updates in the mountain pass!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
My Android phone. My laptop (which I often take on road trips and don't have BT). Whatever the hell I damn well please.
Cable always works without having to fiddle with Bluetooth/pairing shit on the screen.
Re: (Score:2)
wait, what laptop DOESN'T have bluetooth?
even my 2008 HP dv2990 had it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Why is a Senator even wasting time on this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
You could use an FM transmitter to bridge the gap between your playback device and the car's sound system, if it doesn't have an input jack. No way your contact list will get slurped over one of those.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If there's no AUX jack, I would say there's no good solution to using the phone as a phone with a car that's not yours. Either you leak (the FM transmitter option) or you have to trust the vehicle and its owners. The best option may be to toss the phone in the passenger seat, in speakerphone mode, and forego the use of the sound system for anything related to phone calls.
Incidentally, the presence of a 3.5mm jack was a major factor in my choice of 8 inch tablet recently. In order to keep the cost well under
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not even sure what the issue is...
I have a Nissan Leaf (EV) and AM works fine.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Any time I want to listen to 20 minutes of ads, 5 minutes of talk, and 5 minutes of music I'll listen to AM.
Which is... ah...yeah. Pretty much never.
Re: Venn diagram (Score:2)
My husband listens to AM radio in his 2017 Bolt EV every day.
Also, the aftermarket CD player that was installed in it so he can choose from his 15,000 disc collection.
Re: Senator Markey (Score:2)
The AM reception in my 2015 Volt and my husband's 2017 Bolt is fine.
What's the problem with Tesla ?
Re: Senator Markey (Score:3)
The problem with Tesla is they would have to do real RF engineering and they could not care less.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Is there anything that goes to the radio that their phone won't give them?
Anything in rural areas. 5G basically just dies away from cities and a few major connecting freeways.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Is there anything that goes to the radio that their phone won't give them?
Local news?
Seriously. I live in a city of 200,000 people and our local channel is AM. Interviews and discussions about local matters.
When I want music, I tap over to draw from a USB stick with my entire library on it, but for live programming of non-music, AM it is.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Yes.
Local road conditions up to the minute (per the "tune to 1620 AM" signs at the airport)
Audio for your movie, at the drive-in theater. But you probably don't use those anymore either.
A sample of the local accent, if you're not inclined to get out of the car and actually talk to someone.
Live sports outside of the Big Four pro leagues. For example, you can listen to a college basketball game on the rad