In early December 2022, Ed Markey, the Democratic Senator from Massachusetts, asked no less than 20 car manufacturers to ensure that access to kHz-band radio broadcasts remains omnipresent across all of their vehicles — including electric vehicles.
Responses were released on Wednesday by the legislator. To say he was less than thrilled with their communication is perhaps an understatement.
The InFOCUS Podcast: Craig Fugate
AM radio “is the foundation of the national emergency response system,” Craig Fugate, the FEMA director during the Obama Administration, reminds us in an InFOCUS Podcast distributed last week by RBR+TVBR. “You don’t have to get a lot of stations to serve as a primary entry point when you use AM radio,” Fugate says.
Of the 20 companies, eight — BMW, Ford, Mazda, Polestar, Rivian, Tesla, Volkswagen and Volvo — have removed broadcast AM radio from their electric vehicles.
By removing broadcast AM radio from their vehicles, Markey said that the nine automakers have undermined the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) system for delivering critical public safety information to the public.
Ten automakers — Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar/Land Rover, Kia, Lucid, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Stellantis, Subaru, and Toyota — still maintain access to broadcast AM radio in their vehicles.
Meanwhile, Mercedes-Benz and General Motors declined to provide individual responses and instead relied on a response from the industry trade group, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation.
“The responses to my letter show that far too many automakers are ignoring the critical safety benefits of AM radio,” said Markey. “Although many automakers suggested that other communication tools — such as internet radio — could replace broadcast AM radio, in an emergency, drivers might not have access to the internet and could miss critical safety information. The truth is that broadcast AM radio is irreplaceable. As the auto industry rightfully replaces the internal combustion engine with electric batteries, I will continue to work to ensure that automakers maintain access to broadcast AM radio in all their vehicles.”
Markey is a member of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee. In the state he represents, there’s no bigger example of this than iHeartMedia-owned News/Talk WBZ-AM 1030, long a key voice across Boston and much of New England. Unlike other spoken word AMs, it does not have an FM translator covering the city. Even if it did, listeners from across the region likely wouldn’t be able to tune in to the micro-MHz signal.
