US House Passes Bill Mandating AM Radios in New Vehicles

The US House of Representatives has passed the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act with bipartisan support. The bill directs the Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to issue formal rules requiring automakers to equip all newly built or imported passenger cars, trucks, and SUVs with traditional AM radio as standard equipment, and bars them from charging buyers additional fees or subscription charges.

The bill responds to a trend in the auto industry of phasing out traditional AM radio. As connected vehicles spread and the shift to electric vehicles accelerates, automakers including Tesla, Rivian, BMW, and Volvo have removed analog AM receiver modules from some mass-production vehicles, turning instead to streaming platforms delivered over vehicle cellular connections, such as TuneIn or iHeartRadio, and to satellite radio. Automakers' engineering explanation is that high-voltage motors and power electronics inverter systems in modern electric vehicles generate strong electromagnetic interference; such stray fields can disrupt AM-band signals and cause audio distortion, and eliminating the interference while preserving clear sound requires additional spending on wiring shielding and hardware filtering.

Lawmakers backing the bill and US emergency communications authorities have expressed concern over the removal of AM receiver modules. They note that AM broadcasts travel long distances, penetrate obstacles well, and do not depend on modern network infrastructure, and have long served as a key bearer network for the national public alert system. When extreme natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, or blizzards, or sudden public safety crises, knock out the power grid, cut power to cellular base stations, and sever fiber-optic internet links, in-car analog AM radio is the channel through which stranded residents and drivers receive official disaster relief instructions and life-safety warnings; if it is replaced by streaming apps that rely on mobile networks, it would be unusable in extreme network outages.

After passing the House, the bill has been sent to the Senate for consideration. The Senate version was previously led jointly by bipartisan senators and has secured the co-sponsorship support needed to clear the filibuster threshold. Once the bill takes effect, US transportation regulators will have one year to write specific implementing rules and then enforce them on all automakers selling vehicles in the United States during a subsequent transition period. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents major automakers, has repeatedly lobbied against the measure, saying mandatory installation and shielding would impose billions of dollars in compliance and retrofitting costs on the industry.