My in-car entertainment does not include AM radio.
I'm not convinced that there is much on AM these days anyway. Radio Wales claim to still be there but I've not picked it up in years.
Good job they are on FM & DAB.
My car doesn't have a CD or cassette or 8-Track player either. Not a problem as I can just play the stuff on my phone via Bluetooth if I'm not in a radio listening mood.
And no AM shouldn't be a problem either as I am European not American.
According to Car+Driver, over there they are planning to legislate such that all new cars should have AM.
There is some logic to it as AM can cover further distances as mentioned here in this interesting comparison. That would make it more suitable for some of the more remote States. And, according to C+D, "In July 2022, one of Canada's largest cellular providers suffered a cross-country outage that left some 12 million people without coverage. But AM radio still provided news and traffic information"
However, that makes it awkward for car manufacturers (apparently EVs in particular will struggle with interference) and it would be expensive to redesign the hardware.
C+D added one of their famous surveys to the article and it looks like there is a small majority who still want AM - maybe they were swayed by the sentence, "Proponents say passing the Act is about providing emergency services or free speech."
In the survey, I went with "You must be joking. It's 2023"
It took one of the commenters to point out that it is actually 2024.
Another one came up with the solution to this problem - carmakers should give away a free AM transistor radio with each new car.
This one costs £9.98 on Amazon and is an ideal gift for a friend who likes to pretend to be an old lady.
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