@arstechnica One of the issues is the noise from the invertors in hybrid and electric vehicles create interference that would require expensive shielding.
@arstechnica The issue is we can't compare how people receive an alert when all systems are functional vs how they might receive them during a disaster. During a disaster our usual methods may all be taken out or temporarily offline.
"Requiring the installation of analog AM radios in automobiles is an unnecessary action that would impact EV range, efficiency and affordability at a critical moment of accelerating adoption,"
Really? Adding in this tiny bit of 1920s tech will effect EV range?
@arstechnica Any sufficiently emergent situation requiring the use of AM radio would be so catastrophic that cars wouldn't be usable.
If AM radio is that valuable, then let’s also make sure that every household in the country gets a free battery-powered AM radio and a lifetime supply of batteries. Rechargeable doesn’t count - this is for catastrophic stuff. Power is t available.
@arstechnica AM radio is a much simpler technology that just requires a transmitter and receiver. Meanwhile everything else has a whole network backbone to worry about.
@arstechnica 1% of a country's population is still a huge number of people. I really hate the way people talk about 1% as if it's not significant. It happens in medicine all the time whether it's the rarity of a condition or the risks of a procedure.
@arstechnica automakers should continue to support analog FM with the caveat that it is "intended for emergency use only” (call it "Emergency AM" in the car user interface). and then make no efforts to mitigate audible hum/interference/noise caused by car electronics.