Radio in the Car
Here’s more on the issue of AM radios in new cars…with apologies again for bringing it up, since we do have a vested interest in the issue.
There is growing support for the “AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act” that would require automakers to keep AM in their dashboards. We’ve talked before about why automakers are trying to eliminate AM, and then later FM radio…some claim it’s to silence certain political voices, while there is also the idea that car makers want to sell you streaming services that you otherwise would not buy if you had a radio in there for free.
It’s hard for Congress to mandate something like this without also paying for it…although they’ve not been above forcing private businesses to pay for things they require without reimbursement. And let’s face it, automakers would simply add it to the cost of a new vehicle anyway.
But the Congressional Budget Office has concluded that to have AM in every new car would cost $1 million over the next five years. That’s it…$1 million.
Automakers have cried out against a mandate because of its cost. This would seem to rebut that argument.
Think about the crazy amounts of money spent by Congress on all many of things…they measure things in the trillions of dollars these days…not just billions, but trillions.
So a measly million dollars for a communication source already regulated by the government and identified as essential for disseminating emergency information doesn’t sound like much…they probably lose track of more than that in math errors each day alone.
All just another way this shows it’s not about the cost of keeping AM in combustion engine or electric vehicles…and much more about the other factors we suspect.
