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Comment by zephyreon | Hacker News Reader

I appreciate that people still find AM radio useful, nostalgic, etc. This feels like something that should not be regulated. Let auto manufacturers decide to include it or not, consumers will vote with their wallets. I doubt most people will miss AM radio all that much.

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When living in the unassailed peace and prosperity of a Western society in the post-Cold War era, it's very easy to forget that profound security and emergency crises are still likely to occur sooner or later.

Preserving the viability of simple radio circuits that might receive public safety messages and the towers that can broadcast to them is a concern that operates on a different level than "will it make the car cheaper" or "who even listens to AM"

A lot of the systems and technologies that we've grown used to and rely on for our daily needs are extremely capable but also extremely fragile and brittle. Keeping backstop technologies from being lost altogether is fairly cheap and might make a significant difference if and when crises do arise.

If we are worried about emergency broadcasts, perhaps we should focus on portable solar/crank driven radios, instead of relying on one being bolted to your car, which in new cars also requires the entire car entertainment system to be working. And I'm not sure I'd risk going to my car, when the zombies are outside my front door.

When the power goes out, the car radio is the radio that works for most people. If we're talking emergency broadcasting, car AM radio is one of the more battle tested failsafe options.

Because the car has been the only place a radio might be located for the last few decades not because it was a great option in and of itself. Wanting to mandate emergency radios be made available to every person is a matter in and of itself. Even implementing distribution as part of getting a new car is a separate topic. Requiring it be built in to the structure of the car is neither a good option for safety or a good option for efficiency. The only reason we're even discussing it is it was the last place to use it normally.

Consider a hurricane evacuation where you need to have a way to provide real time information for people in their vehicles trying to leave the area. Cell service is down. You can't provide emergency workers to direct traffic.

This is exactly why we should still have AM radio in cars, and why you still see signs on the highway about tuning into X AM station for emergency updates.

A portable AM radio costs 10 bucks. Should we also mandate that cars come with first aid kit, a flashlight or defibrillator?

I'm guessing not defibillators but many countries require emergency first aid kits, hazard triangle markers/flares, fire extinguishers, spare bulbs, etc. to be carried in the car.

I also think the marginal cost of making a FM radio an AM/FM radio is less than $10. Probably more like $1?

Yes an AM receiver is extremely simple.

You think you're making a joke, but many countries do regulate that cars come with basic safety equipment. France is just one example.

Germany may require a first aid kit but it is not required in France. In either case, that argument is moot. We are talking about the USA.

Is life not as valuable in the US? Or are there fewer crashes?

The typical first aid kit doesn’t have anything that is likely to save someone’s life—and if it did I’m pretty sure the typical person wouldn’t know what to do with it.

Most car first aid kits have an emergency/space blanket which would very much save someone's life and require no training. Also plastic bags as occlusive bandages, gauze and triangle bandages for bleeding control which require a 1-4 hour class.

Emergency blanket requires no training but people need to know it exists and how well it can solve the problem of being cold. And also yeah you get soaked in your own condensed sweat.

In a car where space and weight aren’t major concerns probably carrying one of those blue tarps is more useful in general. I’ve basically never seen the stuff being listed in a standard first aid kit though. Certainly not the one that came with my car. In winter just want some spare warm clothing too.

Reminds me I need to go through the winter kit I carry.

If you don't happen to have a suitable handkerchief a first aid kit might be very useful.

In the context of the article "congress" is the USA. I'm not sure where you get the notion that I might be suggesting either of those things.

> Should we also mandate that cars come with first aid kit

Yes actually. Where I’m from cars are required to have a first aid kit and everyone who has a driver’s license needs to do a first aid course.

You’ll be at the scene of an accident you witness waaaaaay sooner than the ambulance. This stuff saves lives.

Requiring first aid kits to be carried in cars is a fairly common thing. And for a radio which needs power, is useful while the car is moving, ... it makes quite a bit of sense for it to be built in instead of being a required "you need to buy and carry this on your own" item

The issue is that lots of things might be useful, be in the USA we dont typically mandate useful.

It’s going to be very situational. What you should probably carry in Death Valley is pretty different from a Midwest winter.

> we also mandate that cars come with first aid kit.

This is standard in Europe. Yes, we should. Small, light weight, low cost, and "it's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it".

And tire jack/spare tire, and a reflector vest.

I had a puncture in a hire car a couple of years ago and was distressed to find they no longer bother with spare tyres - at least in the UK. Not sure if this is some money saving escapade, or if it's because most drivers no longer knows how to change a wheel.

Instead had to wait hours for a tow truck and a replacement tyre.

Vest and first aid kit cost like €15, absolutely should have them - although I'm not convinced the typical "cut finger" first aid kit would be much help. Sure if you knick yourself changing your wheel (which of course you don't do any more), but I wonder what level of injury it's useful for when looking at a typical crash.

Removing the spare tire shaves 20-40lbs off the weight of the car. Manufacturers are more strongly incentivized to lower fleet average fuel economy and emissions, which reducing weight does, and more so than they are incentivized to provide adequate safety equipment like a spare tire. So, you get a can of goo and an air compressor.

In the US some cars just have run flats. But the common case is to just have a donut spare even in cars that can theoretically go off-roading. I suppose the logic is a full size spare takes a lot of room and there are a lot of things that can go wrong beyond a flat and people who use their cars off-road will outfit as needed.

That would not adress at all the point of the comment you are responding to : Even though it costs 10 bucks, there won't be any to buy if no one had use for them and when you may not be able to go the store buy a radio when the emergency happens.

Having an AED in every car would be really nice.

Just put a couple of leads from the starter. That should apply a good enough jolt

Cost benefit ratio would be very low

Wouldn't be a terrible idea.

We mandated UHF channel reception for televisions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-Channel_Receiver_Act)

I believe that mandating AM reception is perfectly reasonable - as the reason given for leaving it out is because auto manufacturers do not want to spend the money to reduce the EMI from their vehicles.

The total added BOM cost to add AM to a modern radio is zero - because they have a single chip that does both AM/FM.

Does that also mean that those cars could potentially be responsible for tons of interference in the AM band in the future?

My belief? yes, it does. The motor controllers are noisy.

If so, it's interesting the FCC hasn't stepped in since nearly all electronics need that certification.

There’s two types of electronics you’re referring to. There’s incidental radiators, like electric motors, switching power supplies, etc that the FCC understands that RF will be generated from, and they ask that these devices merely minimize their RF.

Then there’s Unintentional Radiators which is probably what you’re thinking of, which include computers and other electronics, which are regulated to limit RF.

"Voting with your wallet" works for small and frequent purchases. The bigger and less frequent the purchase, the less impact it has.

Exactly. And especially when the feature makes up only a tiny fraction of the whole feature set and production cost of the product, consumers are entirely at the mercy of the manufacturers. I'm not going to buy a different make over this. I'm just going to tolerate it unhappily. In the extreme case, manufacturers know that they could get away with dropping this kind of feature even if literally everybody wanted it.

In my software development experience, companies invoke this line of reasoning all the time.

Especially for things like cars where there's very few options and most of the auto industry does the same thing.

If you have even a single constraint outside the "industry norm" (like a manual transmission in the US, or potentially in the future an AM radio) you are all but guaranteed to have to give up nice to have features and/or pay a lot more

It's a standardized part of the highway system in the same way as the standardized lines painted on the pavement, not just something to support or not-support based on current fashion. The linked article does a very poor job conveying this with its framing on radio-as-entertainment and on corporate consolidation of radio stations. Key phrases: “Highway Advisory Radio” or “Travelers Information Station”, neither of which are mentioned in the article.

Here are the technical requirements and implementation details of California's (CalTrans') system, for example: https://dot.ca.gov/-/media/dot-media/programs/research-innov...

And some general history: https://aairo.org/history.htm

I drive in the mountains in winter and regularly see 'tune AM xxxx for advisories' road signs, for example. It serves a useful public safety function. How expensive is an AM tuner for a manufacturer? Surely it's like, $5 or less in additional COGS.

The cost isn't in the radio, you have a single chip which is a complete AM/FM radio - the cost is in making cars quiet enough from an EMI point of view - something which, IMO, they should have to do anyhow to comply with Part 15.

RE "...they should have to do anyhow to comply with Part 15....." Yes I agree 110% So should al the manufactures of LED lights and numerous other gadgets ....

This seems like a super important fact for the discussion. Do you have a cite that it really constrains the rest of the car?

"Several automakers, most notably Tesla and Ford, have decided to stop putting AM radios in their electric vehicles. They claim their electric motors interfere with the audio quality of the signal and insist that FM and satellite radio are enough."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/am-radio-congress-automakers/

I can find other references as well if you want. EMI in cars has been an issue for a long time, automakers however did do the needed work suppress the noise from spark plugs, I do not see this as any different.

Thanks!

Any idea if the law requires the redesign (i.e., requires that the AM radio meets some level of audio quality when operating in the vehicle) or if it just requires the AM radio to be present and (somewhat understandably) the manufacturer don’t want to include an AM radio if it consistently sounds bad?

No, but they would to avoid customer complaints at the dealer level - I dont think its a huge cost to add needed filtering.

If the reason for keeping an AM radio is really emergencies, then they could keep it in but only have it work when the car is stationary/motor is off. Rebrand it as "emergency radio" rather than AM radio so people don't complain.

AM is useful in emergency situations, like the hurricane that wiped out Appalachia a week ago. The range of FM is shorter, so it’s more likely to be affected by the disaster.

No, the inclusion of AM radio will not be an actual dealbreaker for anyone, anywhere, who is buying a vehicle, so "voting with their wallets" is not a thing that will happen. Even for me, an amateur radio operator, I won't skip over a vehicle choice just because it didn't include AM radio. It's absolutely the kind of thing for the government to regulate, because individuals cannot make enough of a dent to affect whether AM radio is included, nor are they generally thinking about the criteria that a government regulator will consider, nor do individuals even care or realize what they are missing.

Regulations are good for enforcing national security measures that the general public rarely has in mind when making a purchase. I tend to have a skeptical view of regulation, but this seems wise.

That didn't work out very well for consumers buying GM cars that sold their driving data out the back door to insurance companies.

What’s the total bandwidth of the AM band? Does it make sense to reclaim it for wide area wireless networking?

The width of the AM radio band in the US is just a shade over 1 MHz, so there's not much room.

It's about 1MHz. Signals can propagate pretty far due to ionospheric interactions, which could be a positive or negative effect depending on your intentions.

What would feel like something that should be regulated to you?

Keep in mind that things like hurricanes do happen occasionally, and the car's AM radio might be the only working communication medium...

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