Components in an electrical vehicle create all types of electromagnetic interference (EMI) with the AM signal; such EMI cannot be stopped, but might be reduced to an affordable level with items like shielded cables, component placement, and energetic noise cancelation. For the past few years, a growing variety of carmakers elected to skip the hassle by eliminating AM broadcast radio from their EVs. Ford went further, planning to eliminate AM radio in all its cars starting with the 2024 Mustang. In response, a growing variety of opponents want AM radio restored. The general public battle to avoid wasting AM heated up late last yr when Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., wrote a letter asking all automakers to cope with the EM shielding issues and maintain AM radio. Since then, each houses of Congress have drafted bills with bipartisan support that mandate AM radio in EVs. A study from the Center for Automotive Research (CAR), an automaker group, says doing so could cost carmakers $3.8 billion over the subsequent seven years.
An unnamed automaker told CAR researchers that the prices of defending cables could run from $35 to $50 per vehicle, the prices of filtering could run from $15 to $20. Beyond such costs being passed to consumers, the extra equipment could add weight, which in turn could reduce driving range.
To illustrate automakers sold a median of 8 million EVs per yr within the U.S. from 2024 to 2030, 56 million units total — an insane number that exceeds the wildest adoption forecasts. Divide the potential cost by the unit count, $3.8B by 56M, that is a median of $67.86 per vehicle, right according to estimates, if the unit count were so absurdly high. Nonetheless, we will not know where the CAR number is coming from.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), tasked with forecasting the prices of congressional bills, derived a much lower cost. The CBO’s cost breakdown of Senate bill 1669, AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act of 2023, says, “Based on sales data, this may require manufacturers to update media equipment and infotainment software in about 2.5 to three million EVs per yr. Since the unit costs of those updates are small, CBO estimates the entire cost of the mandate can be several tens of millions of dollars every year the requirement is in effect.” Atop those costs comes the governmental outlay for bill implementation and enforcement, the agency writing, “The CBO estimates that implementing the bill would cost [Department of Transportation] and [General Accounting Office] a complete of $1 million over the 2024-2028 period.”
Side note, the bills don’t determine an enforcement date yet, the potential date being years into the longer term in the meanwhile. Also, one version of the bill exempts automakers producing lower than 40,000 units per yr.
It’s all he-said-she-said that is going to come back all the way down to which side can persuade the best variety of legislators. Carmakers say there are alternatives to AM radio, and that there are more and higher ways to speak with the populace in an emergency than terrestrial AM radio. The National Association of Broadcasters says 82 million Americans hearken to AM stations every month, while Ford says the numbers it’s getting from its internet-connected vehicles reveals AM radio use makes up lower than 5% of in-car listening time. Yet a healthy variety of politicians say their constituents demand terrestrial AM. Because the disc jockeys and talk radio hosts say, “Stay tuned.”
This Article First Appeared At www.autoblog.com
