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Comment by defrost | Hacker News Reader

>> Already, EVs from Audi, BMW, Porsche, Tesla, and Volvo are sold without AM radios, and it's been that way for years.

Tesla aside, the primary reason for European car makers to drop AM radios is the decline of AM radio itself in Europe.

While it's a better, albeit lower grade, band for long distances and ieally suited to the sprawl of the central north american midwest .. it's FM that is king in the more compact European environs.

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FM is also on the way out, being replaced by DAB. Here in Norway the switchover has already been done, other countries in Europe are also working on it but taking longer time. [1]

[19 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Broadcasting#Cou...

Yep, my bad :-)

I meant to type DAB, had a mild brain fart & ran with FM for want of a void to fill.

Take my points and prosper.

Forcing everyone to buy new radios will just kill radio. Especially for cars.

That's why many countries choose to wait until DAB+ has overtaken FM. In the Netherlands FM will at least exist till 2027 and will only be phased out once 70% of radio traffic goes through DAB+.

Also, some ISP's in the Netherlands have already stopped delivering analog radio over coax and most people I know actually did just... buy new radios / DAB+ receivers.

It will take que a long time and I don't it will be successful.

It will be easier to sell internet radios then DAB+ ones.

I tried to use DAB+ with the stations I listen to on FM (France Radio ones, west of Paris). I have reception holes while FM is perfect. I did not notice any improvement in the quality of the sound.

I don’t think I’ve even seen an AM station as long as I’ve been listening to radio (since the early 90s)

It's kind of funny to read that because I sometimes browse European MWDX write-ups on the web. DX is a bit of an addicting hobby, not dissimilar to fishing or hunting in a way. It's fun to read about someone in Finland picking up an AM commercial broadcast from Brazil. You can start thinking about watts-per-km and pretty soon you have your own record book or spreadsheet going.

https://www.wbaa.org/general-news/2022-04-26/finnish-am-radi...

Oh they are there, but its not something most young (<40) would ever listen to. Classical music, religious ones, some official state-sponsored ones.

Behind iron curtain people only had the state ones, so some old folks are often still used to have it tuned and never bothered to change.

Are you sure you are talking about AM and not just regular FM? I just checked for the European country I'm from and all the regular radio stations (state-sponsored, private, classical) are only available via digital or UKW (FM).

I'm from behind iron curtain, I have never ever heard anything on AM, I always thought it is some American thing.

State sponsored are on FM.

Classical music over AM? The quality must be awful.

They are where, exactly? Which country? Certainly not France.

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