Ford Decides It Won't Kill AM Radio After All - Slashdot
source link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/05/23/189237/ford-decides-it-wont-kill-am-radio-after-all
Go to the source link to view the article. You can view the picture content, updated content and better typesetting reading experience. If the link is broken, please click the button below to view the snapshot at that time.
Ford Decides It Won't Kill AM Radio After Allbinspamdupenotthebestofftopicslownewsdaystalestupid freshfunnyinsightfulinterestingmaybe offtopicflamebaittrollredundantoverrated insightfulinterestinginformativefunnyunderrated descriptive typodupeerror
Sign up for the Slashdot newsletter! or check out the new Slashdot job board to browse remote jobs or jobs in your area
Ford Decides It Won't Kill AM Radio After All (theverge.com) 113
Posted by msmash
on Tuesday May 23, 2023 @02:41PM from the change-of-heart dept.-
-
I have both an 80 GB Art Bell C2C/Midnight in the Desert archive AND multiple AM radios. You can too.
-
-
›
Jim Farley announced the company was backing off its decision
Have you noticed that many companies do this nowadays? They throw random stuff at the wall and see what sticks. If there's backlash, then they back off.
-
multiple people in Congress threatened to pass a law. It was pretty much guaranteed to pass due to a combination of Republicans who use AM Radio extensively to spread their "message" and Democrats worried it would be an issue to rural voters.
It is funny to watch the party of laissez faire capitalism once again not letting the market decide when it's convenient for them. Like how Arizona farmers are going to depend heavily on federal subsidies (which the GOP is trying to cut) that are built into the BBB Plan because they're about to be cut off from the Colorado river.... -
Which is a relatively sane behavior. They want to cut AM, and have the idea very real in the industry with an easy path to reverse in case it doesn't work out as desired. Sounds like this round they had antenna design and everything, but just soft locked out the feature to see if it could work.
The alternative for removing unneeded functionality is invasive telemetry, which is all the rage, but I'd prefer a company just try to remove a feature without being sure than spying on me to make sure I don't want
-
Waiting out the backlash is the goal now. If they pull back before any laws can get passed, that means they can try again in a few years.
-
-
Currently they're laughing all the way to the bank. The alt-right would like to dream that they are somehow suffering for showing a rainbow colored truck, but it's just not happening.
-
All those darn gays. We didn't have them in the good old days with Liberace and Paul Lynde.
-
-
-
-
... get Congress to threaten cell-phone makers if they didn't include broadcast FM in their handsets.
Broadcast FM works even when you can't get a cell or WiFi signal.
-
-
Millennials, people born from roughly '81 to '96, yes, they know.
Well, they do if they spend a lot of time riding around in grandpa or grandma's car being forced to listen to "old stuff" they do.
-
They might have learned about it from Everclear.
-
-
I don't remember the make or model, but I had a cell phone once that had an AM/FM tuner built into it, and a low power FM transmitter. You could listen to AM or FM, and you could play music and broadcast it on FM to listen to it in the car...
-
Clearly they should have included AM as well. For emergencies, you know.
-
-
-
I wager that either:
-This was a test, the system did all the RF engineering and including antenna, but disabled the usage to *see* if a future iteration could skip AM testing
-They didn't want to do some AM testing and only after the backlash did they do the testing to validate the system could work
-There will be some reception/quality issue if you opt to use AM because they have interference-
-There will be some reception/quality issue if you opt to use AM because they have interference
Maybe the EV companies should do "proper" EM shielding like any electrical product producing company should be doing anyway.
-
It's an issue of proximity. The interfering signals from the EV is within a few feet of the receiver. That's the issue.
-
-
-
I'm old enough to remember the Intel 486sx. The initial commercial version was literally an Intel 486 chip with its math co-processor disabled on-chip.
Reference, courtesy Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
"486SX: The New Entry-Level PC" [google.com], PC Magazine, October 13, 1992
-
-
by JustNiz ( 692889 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2023 @03:10PM (#63545885)
>> "...a software update would be pushed to restore it"
So the AM hardware was already included and paid for, they just decided to disable it anyway? Soooo dumb.
-
Yes, but not quite as dumb as it appears. The issue is that the electric or hybrid system generates a lot of RF noise, which AM is particularly prone to. So, instead of giving someone a noisy AM radio to complain about, or, actually fixing the RF noise issue, they just disabled it. No one will complain that it doesn't work or is too noisy.
-
It was to stop people realising that their cars are not adequately RF shielded. Their argument that nobody wants it was just a bucket of crap without the bucket.
-
-
It costs what, $2 to add a AM receiver? If the internet gets fucked like it did after 9/11 (when zero news websites would load) AM radio is critical. It has a long range and you can have an essentially infinite number of receivers.
-
The internet doesn't get fucked like that anymore. It's been years since the internet during an Apple keynote stream was anything other than smooth like butter. The Victoria's Secret fashion show hasn't fucked the internet in so long I don't even remember when during the year it takes place. Those are the only two events that would regularly cause internet grief outside their own streams. Hell, I'm not even sure how long it's been since I've tried to follow a link here and found the site slashdotted.
Basically, outside of DDoS attacks... and even those can be mitigated... that sort of internet fuckery is a thing of the past unless your admin/ops people are incompetent.
-
How about if a few IXPs get blown up?
-
Sooner or later, all the sportsing is going to be on the internet, and that's going to be a problem at least regionally.
-
-
FYI: That would have worked if it was DSL.
-
-
-
This is so old school and deprecated. Nowadays modern systems use one dedicated connection for each listener so we can easily track what every listener is doing. That's why we trashed Mbone/ IP multicast as well since we couldn't track and spy on users. Also, it was a way too efficient infrastructure and we can't have that. Bloat is always better profit wise!:/s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
-
-
When you could be sitting in your car not moving with the electric motor off and you can sit and listen to AM radio without interference
-
I don't have a car you insensitive clod!
-
The control processors would still be running. They are part (not all) of the problem. Anything that generates a square wave (and all digital computers do) can theoretically generate infinite harmonics.
-
Yes, but you aren’t driving the motors and the interference scales with power. That’s why a 100w ecu in a tiny sealed box is dwarfed by a 1kw heater or A/C unit that’s more spread out which is dwarfed by the 250kw motor whose circuitry is far larger still. Saying ECUs are the problem is silly, we have had AM radio forever in vehicles with them no problem. The alternator was worse.
-
-
-
My guess is that most, if not all, radios in cars are simply SDR so keeping AM is as simple as programming it in. The software updates for the two cars that don't have AM currently proves this point nicely. Chances are they were going to charge a monthly fee for AM radio sometime in the future. Taking cues from BMW. Twenty years from now AM and FM will probably be targets in favor of Internet, satellite, or whatever tech car makers come up with to lock down their cars for profits.
-
They are SDRs, but the antennas are very different so you do need some external hardware to make AM work.
-
If you have a strong AM station, just about any antenna including just the wires leading to the antenna jack are sufficient. Part of the robustness of AM is that even the crappiest improvised receiver can be good enough.
-
The stated point of the exercise is to have a radio that performs to expectations, not merely something that can pick up a very strong signal; if you constrain it to strong signals, you might as well be on the FM band anyway. Sure, you can light a light bulb from a coil of wire in your attic if you're close enough to a powerful Tx but that's not a "lighting solution".
-
Strong AM signals are a lot more common than strong FM signals due to propagation characteristics of the band they're in.
-
-
-
-
As mentioned before above (and elsewhere): It's not about the cost of the receiver, it's about the cost and weight of the shielding necessary to make it sound good next to a giant electric motor.
-
... it's about the cost and weight of the shielding necessary to make it sound good next to a giant electric motor.
Actually it's the inverter converting poewer between the batteries and the motor that is the issue. The switching creates electrical noise across a very wide band and designs to mitigate it and filter what's left to below where it clobbers AM radio can substantially increase costs.
But they need it anyway, because ig also clobbers reception in nearby cars, buildings, and pedestrian's portables,
-
-
-
"... its decision to release new vehicles without AM radio broadcast capabilities..."
Holy cow, when did consumer vehicles start having radio transmitters in them (other than short-range CB)? And here I was thinking all this time that the debate was about AM radio *reception* capabilities in cars. Man, I have been missing a major aspect of the debate until now.-
I think this refers to the AM commercial broadcast band in the United States, roughly 530 kHz up to 1700 kKz.
I'm pretty sure they aren't talking about broadcasting AM from within the car, at least not with more than a tiny amount of power.
-
+1 thought the same when I read it...
-
If they were smart they would actually be worrying about broadcast. There aren't very many AM listeners, and those are dying off. The number of AM stations is decreasing, and will go down faster as the audience decreases.
-
-
It couldn't possibly cost more than $2 to add an AM radio to a car stereo, although providing a good antenna input may be more expensive. They spend a lot more than that adding SiriusXM capability to every car I buy, despite the fact that I have vowed to never pay money for a radio service, even though I've listened to it from a month free every time I bought a new car.
-
The tuner is basically going to be a single chip with a small amount of supporting electronics, so I fail to see how just having an FM transceiver saves anything.
-
AM radio is Highly susceptible to interference from poorly shielded high frequency electronic systems.
They want to cheap out on proper shielding to pad already competent profit margins.
They can't do that until they phase out AM radio because it reveals in an easily verifiable manner. Consumer history shows the consumers don't like that and resultantly tend to create class action lawsuits and general mistrust , that the company would rather avoid.
-
-
What happened to DIN slots? I put whatever radio I want into my car.
-
I thought that the D in DIN stood for Deutsch
its a German standard.
-
GM at least has tied so much into their stock radio you really can't replace it.
-
-
almost 20 years ago my first car was a Ford and it just had a FM radio.
-
-
Well, your side tried to do this too, and couldn't keep air america running for even a year.
-
That's because Air America failed to what is necessary to succeed. You need indignation, anger, hatred, subtle and overt racism, ceaseless us-vs-them rhetoric, the unreasonable glorification of a past that never existed, and an unconditional refusal to accept anything that doesn't feed the narrative.
Conservatives are fucking GREAT at that. Liberals suck.
-
You... you actually think that liberals don't bash the other side anytime they can? And don't get angry (just say the name 'Trump' and watch the steam come out of their ears), never show even a hint of racism (check your privilege, you biased-from-birth white people), and consider us all one big happy family (no 'us-vs-them' rhetoric)?
Really? How did you even come to that conclusion?
-
Not at all. I'm saying they don't have the single-minded level of determination necessary to make liberal talk radio succeed.
Both sides share their biases. But the conservatives are far more focused and determined, and the liberals lack the will.
-
-
-
-
Read the summary. The point of AM radio is that a signal can go for literally thousands of miles, so in the event of a disaster (not just a nuclear war, but also something like the 2003 East Coast Blackout) it is possible to communicate with the population. The hardware was already in the car -- all they had to do was a software update to put it back. There was literally no reason to take it out.
-
IIRC, the reason that AM is a concern is that some of the electric motors are a problem interference wise on those frequencies. Now perhaps some warning that noise on AM band is expected or something, but I think they were hoping to not have to deal with it and just be quiet.
One point of concern would be that if some disaster did happen, you need the populace to think to listen to their AM radio in their car, which may or may not be a convenient place. If AM is so important, you'd think there'd be a stronger push for, say, handheld AM radios and awareness.
-
Geez, it just means that these EV's need to be properly shielded, no?
-
The AC's comment was that it AM was gone only due to a choice, that could be reversed via software. Shielding interference from the motor then becomes a cost, and design choice that isn't just a software patch.
-
Yes, but that adds cost/weight to a vehicle. Shielding ain't free. I can attest to the fact that my EV has more interference problems than my previous ICE. It's fine if you have a strong signal, but any weak signal gets drowned out by the EM of the high voltage systems. Ford had decided that it wasn't worth the effort anymore.
-
Yes, but that adds cost/weight to a vehicle. Shielding ain't free. I can attest to the fact that my EV has more interference problems than my previous ICE. It's fine if you have a strong signal, but any weak signal gets drowned out by the EM of the high voltage systems. Ford had decided that it wasn't worth the effort anymore.
Then it appears that the AM radio was just the canary in the coal mine....I'm guessing that if the EVs are so poorly shielded they mess with AM radio, they're going to be messing with
-
-
-
IIRC, the reason that AM is a concern is that some of the electric motors are a problem interference wise on those frequencies.
That is certainly what they have claimed. However, if that were true then it would take more than a software update to re-enable AM radio in the EV models that were already released without it so that claim is not consistent with the evidence.
-
It depends, options are:
-They will enable via software, but the interference will be audible. This may be an experience they thought would be better off turned off than dealing with complaints about AM audio quality. So we may be seeing another phase of 'see if low quality AM is good enough.
-They had done engineering work, but skipped some QA work on AM audio and so they wouldn't be *sure* it would work right, and a belated QA effort revealed it to not be the problem they were afraid of.
-This round of disa
-
I favour the "this was the best reason marketing could dream up to explain management's crazy decision" explanation.
-
-
Or they could have been fielding so many calls about how bad the interference was in their EVs (mine has lots of interference), that turning it off via software would save them the headache of having to respond to each complaint.
-
Not really, the motor needs to be moving to enable the interference. Presumably all it would do is require the vehicle to stop to listen.
-
Agreed. Personally I would be surprised if it was Sirius XM behind this, ultimately.
"Since we're facing increased competition from streaming apps you - understandably - have no sane choice but to support in your cars, we will be forced to reduce your share of subscription proceeds by one nanopenny per month per vehicle. But... if you were to eliminate AM as a competitor today, we could forestall that reduction until say... 2030. At which point we could offer a further extension if something unfortunate
-
-
Remember they used to (maybe still do) have signs on freeways saying "Tune to channel 1234.5 for traffic news"?
Also it's AM. Just scan the dial until you pick up a signal. That's how we used to find channels in the old days. It's how I still find channels on FM (just last week even when traveling).
Handheld AM/FM radios are a thing, including handheld with a crank to power it, some with solar. A popular item to stick into emergency or travel kits.
Some states still make more use of AM than others given the
-
Only when you are driving. Once you stop moving the interference will also stop. It’s about the same as old school alternator noise on AM (which was an ongoing problem) except now the alternator is quite a bit larger. Even if they didn’t fix the problem the emergency communication would still work, it’s just am talk radio or music you listen to while driving that would be ruined.
-
-
Do you believe that anybody born in the last 30 years, when faced with a disaster and broken communication networks, is going to think to go to AM radio?
-
Do you believe that anybody born in the last 30 years, when faced with a disaster and broken communication networks, is going to think to go to AM radio?
Well....
I guess the ones with a better chance of survival will.
People in natural disaster prone areas (and well, a LOT of the US has 1 type or another risk for natural disasters)....know this and when evacuating, they tune in, especially when everything else is down and news is hard to get.
Remember, cell towers are usually the first thing to go just after power....and FM and others can't transmit as far into "dead zones" as AM can.
It isn't like this is going to add thousands of dollars to an already expensive car you know.
Are you afraid of options for some reason?
You'd prefer to limit your options for some reason?
-
Emergency radios cost a LOT less than a car, and are way more useful/portable in an emergency. I'm not arguing for/against AM radio in cars. I'll agree that more choice is usually better than less choice. However, the rest of the reasoning here is pretty weak.
-
I actually did use my car radio when I had to evacuate from the Oroville dam crisis.
Nearly all of the FM stations were broadcasting emergency information.
The AM stations were broadcasting prerecorded church sermons, latino music, and conservative talk radio. Only one station had emergency info and it was just a simucast of their FM sister station.
-
the problems with EVs interfering with AM radio haven't really been solved. Several EV vendors (notably Tesla) had it and removed it because they were getting so many complaints about low quality reception.
It's not just that people are going to want AM Radio to work, it's that they're gonna want it to work as well as it does in their gas powered cars & trucks. Making that happen is the expensive part. If I had to guess it means a lot of very expensive shielding.-
Sounds like EVs need serious engineering thought put into better EM shielding then...period.
If they're messing with AM radios, then I'm guessing they're so poorly shielded they're a threat to other electronic devices they come close to too.
-
Correct. Generating that level of electrical interference is supposed to be illegal. The FCC jumped all over computers for that back in the time of the Apple II. And that was a 35 w power supply.
-
-
-
AM radio is also a very good way to check for a nearby thunderstorm. You can hear a lighting strike on AM radio long before you can hear the thunder from the storm. That said, you do have to know to tune it to a frequency that has no nearby broadcasts on it.
-
Short wave is AM radio, as are medium and long wave. AM means "amplitude modulation", and it is used for SW, MW and LW. MW is probably the most common frequency range used for AM these days, although when I was growing up it was always BBC Radio for LW that my parents had on.
-
"You can hear a lighting strike on AM radio"
and if you count seconds (one one thousand, two one thousand...) and when you hear the thunder multiply by 333 metres to get the distance.
(somebodys sig mentioned that light travels faster than sound)
-
its also good to listen to canadian hockey and news. even during a disaster you got something to tune in. genius.
-
-
-
Anyone who lives in an area where disaster preparedness is encouraged has a home survival kit or go-bag that includes a battery-powered or better wind-up radio. It's standard survival equipment. And all those radios are AM/FM and in some cases SW. Even if someone doesn't know that AM is better for survival broadcasts than FM, if they hear static across the FM band, trying the AM band is going to be logical, no? And then they'll hear the emergency broadcasts.
-
RDS-TMC has had the capability for over 30 years to interrupt FM broadcasts, to play traffic announcements. Without similar functionality on AM, it seems to have little value.
-
I would think that people born 31 years ago are worth considering? Do we ignore AM as an emergency communication system merely because teenagers don't use it?
"Fires are burning all over the hills outside the house, but I've been on TikTok all day and it still hasn't told me what to do!"
-
No, but I used 30 years as an easy benchmark. I'm 52 and there's a good chance somebody else would have to prod me into turning on the radio.
-
-
I would. And you should too.
The absolute best cell tower range is 50 miles tops, and that if it's not being hammered by hundreds to thousands of people trying to call loved ones or lookup whats going on, which will most likely take it out before range does.
FM while it's at least one way communication so it has less of a chance to go down, can typically go only 50-200 miles tops since it's mostly line of sight.
AM using skywave at night can eclipse 1000+ miles easily at 50kw. And that not just a blip of a cal
-
-
I believe the reason was very clearly stated by the manufacturers. Any AM radio use was seen as a net loss for satellite radio subscriptions. I mean, it's the same reason businesses use for every asinine decision. Profit.
-
Name one time AM radio was the last surviving communication means and it was used to broadcast critical information.
-
I don't mind that AM radio will continue to have crappy reception in EV's. In fact, Ford etc might as well throw up a notice on the screen that it's intended for emergency use only and sorry but tough luck about the bad reception.
People seem to have short memories that AM radio is quite useful for emergency broadcasting. Ten or so years ago there was a big power outage in Southern California and the only station on the air was a single AM radio station that apparently had a government grant for emergency ge
-
-
Funny thing, the other day I wanted to listen to a baseball game. I was getting crappy reception on FM, so I switched to the broadcast's AM signal (simulcast). It was perfectly clear and had better sound quality (for that sort of broadcast anyway).
-
Cool story bro! Even though AM offers half the bandwidth of FM. https://man.fas.org/dod-101/na... [fas.org]
-
In other words, plenty wide for voice. That's why I specified for that sort of broadcast. The lack of odd distortion and buzzing sounds was nice.
-
-
-
Hey look! Someone still thinks it's cool to criticize sports fans!
-
Yeah there's a huge demographic of people who like to make fun of sports fans.
I'm one of them too.
That's okay. Sports fans don't care about much outside their own sports culture anyway.
Under the rest of us they're just clutter until we recycle them into jokes.
Everybody wins.
-
Those who try to be cool, are never cool.
Those who don't give a f*** and do what they want are often viewed as cool in receipt of the perceived power an independent person has relative to someone who's chained by social-centrics.
-
What people joke about is more about themselves then the target of the joke. I can provide a long list of things that other people like that I don't give a shit about (including baseball), but I understand that nobody wants to hear about my preferences.
-
-
-
-
-
For emergency use you only need static filled talk radio, hi fidelity music is a non-issue. AM radio costs less than a dollar in an automobile, and if it's an EV with a software radio it's nearly free.
It may be obsolete but it's actually in use in some deep rural areas as the only stations you can pickup.
-
-
-
Congress?
-
Well how else are coffin dodging boomers going to listen to the music of their youth?
-
Yep, I guess we can'ts be geniuseses like you...
-
AM radio is for listening to emergency broadcasts and travel alerts, not for listening to HiFi music!
-
Recommend
About Joyk
Aggregate valuable and interesting links.
Joyk means Joy of geeK