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Congress wants to force AM into every new car for emergency alerts.
The fight over the future of AM radio got a little more heated this week as organizations representing the auto and technology industries told Congress that its plan to mandate this mode of radio wave reception is poorly conceived and will hinder progress.
AM radio has seen almost every other in-car entertainment option come and go—vinyl, 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs—and it might predate just about everything other than playing "I Spy," but time is catching up with this old broadcast technology. It is starting to get left behind as new models—many of which are electric vehicles—drive off into the sunset, streaming their audio instead of modulating its amplitude.
[...] "As more and more Americans adopt electric vehicles, we must ensure that they are equipped with AM radio. AM radio is—and will remain—an essential communications channel for emergency alerts and for disseminating news and other important information to residents of our district and communities across our country. I am proud to co-lead this bipartisan legislation which would ensure that EVs continue to be equipped with this basic but critical capability," said Rep. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), another co-sponsor.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday May 24 2023, @04:54PM (2 children)
When PCs were coming out in the 1980s most of them didn't comply with any of the RF emissions regulations. The FCC actually created Part C as an exemption to allow PCs to spew EMI above and beyond anything made before.
I had an Atari 800 with a 5.25" floppy drive that was designed before Part C was announced. It had a serial data transfer cable that ran at some ungodly slow speed, I think it would take upwards of 2 minutes to read a full 88Kbyte floppy into memory. Not that you had 88Kbytes of memory to read it into, but still, the data transfer was really slow - but it was EMI compliant without the Part C exemption.
I suspect similar things are at play now, new EV tech that would be hard (read: expensive) to make compliant with existing rules, like: not interfering with AM radio... Plus, what business ever asked for _more_ regulations?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday May 24 2023, @10:08PM (1 child)
Yes, this is what I think. Manufacturers want to not have to care that they're polluting the electromagnetic spectrum. Not care that their products can't be used on planes. My Apple II would interfere with TV reception even though it and the TV were in opposite corners of the house, about 60 feet apart. The PC-AT never did that.
It's not even that expensive to reduce EMI to such a low level that it's not noticeable at distances greater then 1 meter.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 25 2023, @09:58AM
>It's not even that expensive to reduce EMI to such a low level
That depends....
Plastic housing: $4
UL certified plastic housing: $4.50
Plastic housing sprayed inside with conductive paint: $6.50
UL certified plastic housing sprayed inside with conductive paint by UL certified paint sprayer: $27.50
It hits the worst on small volume operations where the extra design and testing and process development and certification work isn't amortized over millions of units.
🌻🌻 [google.com]