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AM radio law opposed by tech and auto industries is close to passing | Ars Technica (arstechnica.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

156 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A controversial bill that would require all new cars to be fitted with AM radios looks set to become a law in the near future. Yesterday, Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass) revealed that the "AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act" now has the support of 60 US Senators, as well as 246 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives, making its passage an almost sure thing. Should that happen, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would be required to ensure that all new cars sold in the US had AM radios at no extra cost.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (17 children)

Lol. "Proponents claim it will reduce electric vehicle range". What a fucking joke.

Here's the thing about AM. Especially during any disaster. Damned near everything can get knocked out, power wise within 50 miles of you. At that point, you have no cell service, no data, and no FM radio. But AM? AM operates at a lower/longer frequency band. It can reach over double what FM can, and much further still, at night when it's signal can actually reflect off the ionosphere. Hundreds of miles.

So if shit ever REALLY goes down, AM radio is the most usable form of spreading information across the country. Bombs, freak accidents, mad scientist doomsday device, war, floods, tornados, etc. Anything that knocks a city out on power, AM will give you that information you'll need about where to go and what to look out for.

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The argument for AM appears to be: the vast majority of adults will receive an emergency broadcast through their cellphone, but what happens if some event has already occurred which disabled large portions of the cellular network (which itself is an obvious target to create havoc)?

I'm fine with using AM as a redundant system for alerts.

Maybe make it more useful though for people in the car? I don't need an AM button I'm never going to touch. Instead have it monitor whatever the emergency broadcast frequencies are automatically, and put something on screen when there is an alert. That would make it a useful "modern" feature as opposed to appearing as a legacy holdover.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I disabled the emergency alerts on my phone because my provincial govt was using it like their personal Twitter account, and I can't stand listening to the radio. I guess I'm going to find out when the tsunami just rolls over me.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I haven't been following the situation, but it sounds like we haven't even really managed to get terrestrial digital broadcast radio functioning all that well for audio. Things have kinda fragmented into three separate standards (HD Radio in the US, and Digital Audio Broadcasting and Digital Radio Mondiale in Europe).

I think that if it's going to reach the point of mandating inclusion of newer radios, it might be preferable to sit everyone down and come up with some kind of broadly-acceptable single standard before we start baking it into legislation.

Also, if we're gonna have a way of talking to the car's computer remotely, for displaying alerts or whatnot, I'd rather that the protocol be cryptographically-secured from the get-go and that the modules be hardened as best we can. I don't really want to deal with little Jimmy with a $10 USB radio and a laptop dicking up autos at scale.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There isn't a way to do it, digitally. It's all radio waves. The lower the frequency, the longer the wavelength, the less information it can carry, but the longer it can travel and get picked up on an antenna. AM operates and can have audio heard/understood at a much lower frequency than a digital signal. AM operates in the KHz range. FM is in Mhz, and digital radio operates in Mhz, as well. Specifically, digital radio is broadcast at around 175Mhz, on the low end; while AM radio is around 1,000 Khz.

Thing is, it takes 1,000Khz to equal 1Mhz. That means that digital radio signal is flinging out data around 175 times more than the AM frequencies could, so it can't reliably transfer nearly as far. There's also a hard line on digital signal interpretation. Once there's a threshold hit for not picking up enough signal to fully interpret it, you drop straight to getting nothing interpreted. It's like how now that all tv signals are digital, so you either get a picture that looks perfect, or you get nothing. Back in the analog days of television you would often get fuzzy pictures and audio. The TV was able to interpret whatever signal it did manage to get, even if it wasn't all of the signal.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

I don't think I've ever heard an AM transmission in my life, is there a benefit relative to FM or digital radio?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Range is the biggest. KMOX in St Louis was known to reach Colorado from my understanding. There are/were a lot of Cardinal fans because of it in that area before they got the Rockies. I don't think they broadcast as strong now, not sure. FM will cut out in under 75 miles* unless you have a "good" antenna.

*Not sure the proper range.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

And at night the way the signals bounce they can be heard for a thousand miles or more. Due to interference only some stations can run full power at night while most have to turn off or turn power way way down.

Occasionally it can be heard across continents even

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In emergency situations the benefit is range. You can broadcast further and reach more areas with one station.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

AM stations have to cut their power to like 10% (often even less!) at night, it's wild

https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/am-stations-at-night

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

some am stations go dark (off the air) at night, even. there's a 'daytimer' near where i am. it's weird.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I think the longer wavelengths of AM transmissions travel a lot farther, and are less prone to scattering, but that's about it. FM allows for more information density (you can broadcast in stereo, for example), and is less prone to the static that plagues AM radio. That's why AM is mostly talk stations, and FM tends to be mostly music.

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