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House votes to put the AM tuner back in every new car at no charge to the buyer
The AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act cleared the House on Wednesday and now goes to the Senate, where 60 senators have already co-sponsored a version. Four automakers would have to refit hardware they took out.
The Product Desk · Product desk
What happened
- The House overwhelmingly passed the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act on Wednesday with support from both parties, requiring new cars, trucks and SUVs to include AM radio at no additional charge to consumers.
- The bill now goes to the Senate, where Ed Markey and Ted Cruz secured 60 co-sponsors for their version earlier this year, the threshold needed to overcome a filibuster.
- BMW, Rivian, Tesla and Volvo no longer fit traditional AM receivers, a move EV makers led because electric motors put out electromagnetic interference in the frequencies AM uses.
- Proponents, whose earlier lobbying for a mandate failed, argue AM belongs in cars because its signal travels long distances and carries critical information during emergencies.
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Why it matters
- constraint The no-additional-charge wording removes the pricing lever an automaker would normally reach for: a mandated receiver cannot be sold as an option box or buried in a higher trim level.
- decision Four automakers have to choose between engineering an AM receiver into vehicles designed without one and betting that the Senate does not act.
- precedent A component deleted for cost, packaging or interference reasons has been shown to be restorable by federal statute, which sets the reference point for the next legacy part a carmaker plans to drop.
Buy a base Model 3 or a base Model Y today and there is no AM receiver in the car [8]. Rivian went further with the R2, which has neither an AM nor an FM tuner and instead carries AM and FM stations free through the digital platform iHeartRadio [9]. On the R1S and R1T, buyers can get FM content digitally or through a built-in receiver [10].
Rivian already gives the stations away without a tuner [9], so the receiver is the part the bill would add back. Those receivers came out while the vehicles were being rebuilt around software, with streaming services such as TuneIn and SiriusXM in place of the century-old broadcast band [13].
In the Senate, the Markey and Cruz version has 60 co-sponsors against a 60-vote threshold, which leaves a margin of zero [18]. Cruz chairs the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee [5]. The two said in a joint statement Wednesday that "This vote sends a clear message to car manufacturers that AM Radio is a lifeline that must be protected in new vehicles" [6].
TechCrunch reports that automakers may be forced to build AM radio into new vehicles within the next year [17]. Its account does not say whether a free internet feed of the same stations would satisfy the requirement [20]. Rivian declined to comment for that story, and Tesla could not be reached [16].
For a team deciding which legacy part to cut next, two tests cover most of the ground. The first is whether the part has an organized constituency outside the company: AM had the broadcast industry, emergency responder organizations, former administrators of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and members of both parties behind it [15]. The second is whether the replacement depends on a network connection the deleted part never needed, which is the difference between a streamed station and an over-the-air one. Of the five automakers named as having dropped the band, Ford is the only one that put it back before anyone required it [19][11].
What to watch
- Whether NHTSA's rulemaking treats a free internet feed of AM stations as compliance or requires a physical receiver.
- Whether all 60 Senate co-sponsors hold once a floor vote is actually scheduled.
- Whether Rivian adds a tuner to the R2 or defends the iHeartRadio route during the rulemaking.