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Ford to drop AM radio in new models, except commercial vehicles
- rmason 4y agoAs a long-time Ford customer and fan of AM radio this annoys me greatly. My current radio died and I've been using phone apps and it isn't a very pleasant experience. The apps are horrible, you have to listen to two minutes of commercials before hearing the station and then they crash often even on wi-fi forcing you to listen to the commercials all over again. I know that Tesla has never had AM radio in their cars. But both GM and Chrysler have developed filtering for their EV's and have announced they will not be dropping AM radio.
- FridayoLeary 4y agoThat’s the way things seem to be going in cars. The simple and uncomplicated analog systems of the past are being replaced with more complicated electronic versions. The benefits are there but they come along with new fail modes that are harder to fix.
- Robotbeat 4y agoExcept it’s false. My Model S plays AM radio just fine. Edit: my Model S is a 2013, and apparently they’ve been phasing out AM on new cars since 2018 or so. The original point (that Tesla never used it) is still wrong tho.
- jvm___ 4y agoThere's a Cadillac where the glove box open button is an option on the main car touchscreen.
- rpcope1 4y agoI don't get this at all. What was wrong with a simple mechanical latch with a mechanical key? It doesn't need power, there's little to break, and little to understand. There's so much absolute garbage getting thrown on these cars, like electric/electronic emergency brakes. Who in their right mind thinks this is a good idea?
- x0x0 4y agoIf you like radio, why haven't you bought one? There are lots of options under $25 on amazon.
- Robotbeat 4y agoTesla hasn’t ever had AM radio in their cars? What are you talking about? I just right now double-checked and my Tesla Model S plays AM radio just fine. (EDIT: Granted it’s a 2013 but still.)
- ec109685 4y agoThey haven’t had them for a while though.
- IronWolve 4y agoMany of the rural areas in my state still use AM radio, schools, community centers, small towns, and the farming migrant workers. The talk channels that report on the schools and community are AM based, not FM. But I've switched to streaming the AM/FM, but having the AM radio is still used. No real reason to drop AM except as a cost cutting feature, filters already exist for EV cars, and aftermarket radios work with AM without issue proving Ford is a liar. I still buy phones with sdcard and headphone jack, at least cars I can upgrade the radio. But why buy a new car if its crippled and marked up, better buy used at this point.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ortusdux 4y agoWA state DOT has the highway advisory radio program where they use roadside AM transmitters for important traffic information.
- knodi123 4y ago> except as a cost cutting feature how much does that save?!? I've literally built AM radios by accident.
- panic 4y agoComplete tangent, but why don't they put simple AM radio receivers (or even low power transmitters) in cell phones? Imagine the cool stuff you could do with an AM radio API!
- yesbut 4y agoIn the US the car manufacturers learned that they can increase their profits by selling more expensive cars to fewer wealthy customers. The average Joe will most likely never be able to afford a new car again. https://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/14601168 https://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/14601168
- booleandilemma 4y agoMore and more nowadays I'm wondering how the "average Joe" is surviving in America at all.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- yesbut 4y agoMost are barely getting by. Most can't afford sudden major emergencies (car breakdowns, medical expenses, accidents, etc.) and most are living paycheck to paycheck.
- LocalH 4y ago[Narrator: They’re not.]
- midoridensha 4y agoThe same way they survive in places like Somalia.
- rpcope1 4y agoIt wouldn't remotely surprise me if we don't see a lot of late 90's to mid 2000's vehicles getting run and rebuilt for a long time, kind of like Cuba. Barring perhaps the crashworthiness, for areas with no rust, it's kind of amazing to see how many older GM trucks of that era are still running down the road (I know I've got a couple myself). It's hard to imagine ponying up many tens of thousands of dollars for a new truck, when they don't really do anything better (or are often worse) than what you have, and the cost of overhauling an older truck still comes out pretty favorably. I wonder if GM is cursing how easy and well understood it is to rebuild and improve a 4L60E or a small block chevy?
- yuppie_scum 4y agoThere’s got to be a Bluetooth capable AM radio you can sync up if you really need this.
- Reptur 4y agoYep. You can get a $10 AM radio with a 3.5mm plug, a $10-20 bluetooth transmitter, and a 3.5mm male to male cable and that'll do it. Still though, AM radio is something you don't plan to use until you're in trouble usually. Most people tend to not plan ahead like that.
- tinus_hn 4y ago[flagged]
- idonotknowwhy 4y agoIt's useful in rural Australia where FM reception is spotty and no cell towers for 50km
- Izmaki 4y agoDo you rate the quality as poor because your experience with AM radio is static noise from some radio station in a nearby country, or?
- Johnny555 4y agoI only use AM radio to hear traffic alerts, which in my area are all on AM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelers%27_information_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelers%27_information_stati... There is a similar license for low power FM, but has slightly different licensing requirements that makes FM less suitable. But even if those requirements were waived, I suspect that new cars without AM radio will be in the road well before state DOTs procure FM equipment and cut over.
- klyrs 4y agoServing a ~100 mile radius with a 5kW antenna is not "large amounts of energy." That's about how much a single cell tower uses, and those outnumber AM towers by several orders of magnitude.
- Izmaki 4y agoI wonder how many cents this will save them per car. When I can buy a Software Defined Radio module for less than a bottle of wine and some sushi that lets me listen to both AM and FM (everything below 1 GHz basically), and this module takes up less space than my smartphone, it can't be because AM radio is particularly hard to install or expensive to produce. Seems pointless to remove, but at the same time I bet the majority of car owners these days don't really use AM that often, if they even know what it is, that is.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoAM is hard to implement in EVs due to shielding requirements. Not just about being cheap, about deprecating the obsolete. From the AM broadcasting Wikipedia page: “Among persons aged 12-24, AM accounts for only 4% of listening, while FM accounts for 96%. Among persons aged 25-34, AM accounts for only 9% of listening, while FM accounts for 91%. The median age of listeners to the AM band is 57 years old, a full generation older than the median age of FM listeners."
- Izmaki 4y agoEVs I get, but the article specifies that this will be removed in gas-powered vehicles, too.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoNew combustion vehicle sales are being phased out in many jurisdictions by 2030-2035. Might as well drop this now for supply chain and shared platform efficiencies considering how fast use is trailing off.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y agoThose deadlines aren't going to be realized. They're just a classist attempt at virtue signaling, completely detached from reality.
- justinph 4y agoMy boomer father, who drives Fords pretty much exclusively, loves to tell me how bad it is that the Tesla I drive doesn't have AM radio. Meanwhile, I didn't even notice and couldn't care less.
- sgt 4y agoWell, your father cares for a good reason about AM reception when driving through the Rockies/Sierras in snowy weather.
- j45 4y agoConsidering how much of their sales are pickups, which are used in rural and mid sized cities, it will be interesting to see how much impact there is, or if there's another reasonable way to tie in AM. AM goes very long distances and this makes driving a Ford a much smaller world.
- uxp100 4y agoI wonder if there is a large difference in audience. Pickups are kind of just minivans for today’s smaller families, with a little different cultural associations. Large cities are packed full of them. The long distance of AM is nice for high school sports. Every now and then I try to tune a little high school football in on the car radio, and it’s niche enough programming that it’s not as if I can change to a different station carrying it when I go out of range. Even pro sports I prefer AM for, who knows why.
- Magi604 4y agoHere in Vancouver the real-time traffic and news channels are all on AM. How would I be able to listen to those stations without AM?
- klyrs 4y agoA crystal set for your dashboard, probably. My '23 EV gets its time from GPS but for some blasted reason, doesn't account for daylight savings. I have to toggle the "daylight savings" clock setting twice a year.
- WirelessGigabit 4y agoI moved to AZ because I was sick of flipping that switch.
- noizejoy 4y agoI’m actually wondering how long those stations will survive, given that routing around traffic bottlenecks is becoming the domain of smartphone apps.
- galleywest200 4y agoCertainly for a while. I am also in the Pacific Northwest (US side) and we too have these stations but the signs on the freeway flash lights when the stations are giving _emergency_ information -- think floods, rockslides, avalanches...
- tomjen3 4y agoI think Norway already turned their analog radio network of (so AM and FM) in favour of digital. So the answer would be the same in both cases: the broadcaster has to update to newer technology to keep listeners.
- mikereedell 4y agoSo people driving new Ford vehicles won't be able to get weather/emergency information in the Rockies/Sierra's (and others I'm sure) along with the vast stretches of I-70/80 (and likely more) that don't have any services for long stretches. Granted the primary user for these broadcasts are over-the-road truckers who likely have other options, but it's also handy to tune into an AM station to hear the weather and road conditions when there's no usable cell service.
- xwdv 4y ago[flagged]
- skullone 4y agoBut it's a feature that comes in quite handy, for only a few dollars of manufacturing cost. I tune to road status AM radio all the time when driving over the mountains
- xwdv 4y agoA few dollars in manufacturing costs per vehicle easily adds up to millions.
- lozenge 4y agoAnd a few tens of thousands of dollars of revenue per vehicle adds up to billions.
- flandish 4y agoThere are a bunch of example replies about how AM is used as a direct life safety device and you and others seem to keep simping for a corp’s ability to profit. Literally choosing profit over people. AM is not replaced by FM, Cell, wifi, iphone 14 sat emerg use… it’s a device that also states use in service to the citizens. It should be mandatory due to the nature of Khz bandwith signal propagation over the Mhz fm band.
- bilsbie 4y agoIsn’t it basically free to include? Why drop it?
- maxerickson 4y agoThe HV components emit more electromagnetic interference, which you hear on a cheap AM radio. They can mitigate it, but probably not for near zero cost.
- 1970-01-01 4y agoThey could drop everything if they brought back the double DIN slot. Such a simple solution but it doesn't jive with the times. We really can't have nice compatibility anymore.
- albrewer 4y agoIf phones could do AM/FM, then all I'd really need is a dumb pass-through to it, skipping the head unit altogether.
- akomtu 4y agoI'm sure they are going to keep the spying onstar module and its anthenna. Unlike AM radio, onstar has no use to the driver, but it has so many uses for everyone else.
- fma 4y ago...OnStar is GM technology, not Ford.
- KingLancelot 4y agoHonestly, AM and FM radio are antiquated shit. Radio should be digital, and preferably lossless. There’s no reason Stereo FLAC, 16 bit 44.1khz audio at about 1000 kbps couldn’t be delivered.
- kube-system 4y agoMany FM and some AM stations do broadcast in digital. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-band_on-channel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-band_on-channel
- News-Dog 4y agoA much better option would be Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Radio_Mondiale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Radio_Mondiale
- kube-system 4y agoDRM is IBOC. That is mentioned on the page I linked.
- News-Dog 4y agoNo, DRM is Not IBOC. AM & FM IBOC is (IMHO) a poor chimera of digital and analog broadcasting, it has licensing fees, and other issues. Pure DRM is licensing free and fully digital. Digital Radio : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_radio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_radio
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- switch007 4y agoI love DAB (digital radio) in the UK!!! Unless you’re in … town … or … then … lucky … hear … word. (It’s all or nothing. When the signal is low it cuts out all the time)
- mansion7 4y agoIn the US, this appears to predominantly impact rural listeners, conservatives, and religious folks, who tend to be large consumers of AM talk radio. According to publicly available demographic information, they are also more likely to be Ford owners.
- Kon-Peki 4y agoThe exact same vehicle sold through a commercial contract will include AM. So this is really just trying to force people to pay to stream the internet feed of all of these radio stations. Jim Farley is going off the deep end. If he’s not careful the Ford family is going to can him, and he can live in a van down by the river, with no AM radio in it.
- regus 4y agoHere is a youtube video explaining why electric cars negatively affect AM radios and why companies like Tesla are phasing them out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVHwQn9PRUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVHwQn9PRUw
- SkyPuncher 4y agoI do not understand this. To me, it just screams "anti-consumer". Surely, the components are already included in the radio unit. Why remove it?
- squokko 4y agoWow, count on another $4,200 in net income next year. Seriously, how expensive is an AM radio?
- iancmceachern 4y ago[flagged]
- News-Dog 4y agoPerhaps the cost of licensing fees for the AM stereo system used? AM Stereo : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AM_stereo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AM_stereo
- kcb 4y agoI would guess most cars don't even implement it.
- quailfarmer 4y agoI think the discussion here is missing something. The issue isn't "shielding" the radio. Modern power electronics, including Hybrid/EV drivetrains and modern electronic transmissions, produce in-band interference for broadcast AM. If you shield the radio, you're blocking the _signal_, as well as the noise. The only solution is to shield the power system (including the drive motor). This can add significant cost in both engineering and production, and interfere with thermal management (gaps let out hot air and RF!). Of course, with enough effort, anything can be shielded, but most EMI emissions masks I work with only go down to 30Mhz! Single MHz is below the range of "RF" and within the range of "Power Electronics" in the minds of modern engineers. The real issue here is that while FM made the switch to hybrid Analog+Digital, AM is still living in the past. The technology has not changed in literally a century. The FCC has authorized hybrid AM operation, but there hasn't been any real adoption. We have 100 years of signal processing magic, and it would be so much cheaper for car manufacturers to include a single chip than to properly shield drivetrains just for AM radio backwards compatibility. We should have spread-spectrum orthogonal-multiplexed radio beamed to the entire country from space. 100 geo-coded channels, and your car automatically plays the one for the region you're in. Adapt or die, but the high power future isn't going to wait up for AM.
- serf 4y agoICE engines have been try to pollute AM bands since forever with their ignitions and other high voltage discharge systems -- that's why they're usually fairly shielded. HID headlights created huge interference problems on the earliest cars to equip them -- now they're shielded. The early Prius model owners could famously tell when the ICE engine was about to begin operating due to the ICE ignition system beginning charge and causing AM interference, which then became much more pronounced upon activation and ignition discharge. I guess my point is that these were all tremendously noisy sources that got remediated -- I worry for the RF noise floor across the board when companies are no longer incentivized to chase such gremlins.
- News-Dog 4y agoOne of the many sources of generated noise that interferes with AM reception. Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_over_power_lines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_over_power_lines >On August 3, 2006, FCC adopted a memorandum opinion and an order on broadband over power lines, giving the go-ahead to promote broadband service to all Americans. The order rejected calls from aviation, business, commercial, amateur radio and other sectors of spectrum users, to limit or prohibit deployment until further study was completed. FCC chief Kevin Martin said that BPL. "holds great promise as a ubiquitous broadband solution that would offer a viable alternative, to cable, digital subscriber line, fiber, and wireless broadband solutions".
- switch007 4y agoWhen I read the story about GM dropping CarPlay, I thought to myself that it’s just the beginning. All or most manufacturers are going to pull crap like that - all that indignant postering about never buying a GM will be in vein. Soon it’ll be: “I’m never buying GM, Ford, Toyota, Chevrolet…”
- LimeLimestone 4y agoNo idea how widespread AM is across the pond but during the 23 years I have spent living in Poland, never have I listened to an AM radio station and trust me, I even intentionally tried to find such stations.
- carlmr 4y agoGermany here. The only time I listened to AM was when I built my first fuzz pedal and amplified radio instead of the guitar.
- phs318u 4y agoMy very first electronics project as a child was making a crystal radio with my dad. The wonder of being able to listen to AM stations with no power! Vale AM!
- donatj 4y agoSeems like a mistake. I suspect there is a large overlap in the people who buy religiously domestic and the people who religiously listen to AM radio.
- JohnFen 4y agoAs long as it's possible to buy third party radios, my car will have an AM radio no matter what Ford (or any other manufacturer) decrees.
- alkonaut 4y agoGenuine question: why isn’t traffic info/emergency broadcast moved to FM in North America? Is it mostly tradition/inertia in the use of FM, or also technical such as long distances being somewhat cheaper to cover? I’m not sure if a car I have owned has AM or whether there are any stations on there. The modes I can switch between are called “FM” and “Bluetooth” (but I’m sure the same model would have AM in NA).
- WirelessGigabit 4y agoAM goes MUCH further than FM. And the USA is friggin' HUGE.
- alkonaut 4y agoIt's no bigger than Europe and individual states correspond quite well to a European state in terms of density and population. So size and density alone doesn't really explain all the differences between Europe and the US, nor in this case. For the sparser areas one can easily compare the northern half of Sweden to e.g. Idaho (northern half of Sweden has the same area as Idaho but half the population at 1M). There is FM coverage behind every tree. Don't ask me what the cost difference would be if that had been solved with one big AM transmitter instead of dozens of FM transmitters. But at least the emergency broadcasts will be stereo.