The Federal Government May Soon Require AM Radio in All New Cars and EVs If This Bill Becomes Law

• The AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday after receiving support from both political parties.
• The bill would require automakers to put AM radios in every car made or sold in the United States.
• Before it can be enacted, the legislation will need to make its way through the U.S. Senate and reach President Trump’s desk.

Baseball and talk radio fans are in luck. The AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives this week, and it’s one step closer to making AM radio a requirement in all new vehicles made or sold in the United States. If the bill passes, manufacturers that have chosen to leave out AM radio functions will have to correct course with their new vehicles.

There are more than 4300 active AM radio stations in the United States, according to the FCC, and Nielsen reports say more than 80 million Americans listen to AM radio every month. AM stations are especially important in rural areas or in times of natural disasters, where radio may be the most reliable form of getting information to the public. That’s the driving force behind the bill, which aims to equip every vehicle with the ability to get an AM radio signal when internet or cellular service might not be available.

Automakers including BMW, Tesla, Mazda, and Volkswagen have quietly eliminated the AM radio option in their EVs in recent years, though some models have gone without AM stations for over a decade. Ford briefly took it a step further by announcing it would remove AM radio in all of its vehicles, regardless of powertrain, for the 2024 model year, but the company walked back that announcement after the act was introduced in May 2023.

With 80 million Americans reportedly listening to AM radio, that’s about 23 percent of the U.S. population. In gas-powered cars, keeping AM tech is relatively inexpensive, but electric vehicles have a much bigger hurdle in adding AM into the mix: Frequencies emitted from electric motors tend to jam AM stations. Rather than finding a solution to a problem only a small percentage of drivers would ever notice, automakers have typically decided to forgo AM capability altogether.

As a result, a good chunk of EVs on the market today don’t include AM radios. Tesla abandoned the function in 2018, and BMW has never offered it across its EV lineup, which began with the i3 in 2013. Mazda, Volkswagen, and Rivian also omit the feature. Automakers including Toyota, Chevrolet, and Ford currently offer AM radio in at least some of their EVs.

A report from the U.S. Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says the bill would impact roughly 2 to 2.5 million vehicles every year. The CBO says the costs of updating the radio equipment itself would be relatively small, since most EVs still offer FM radio functions. However, it’s unclear how much it will cost automakers to develop a workaround to the jammed AM signals. If enacted, the CBO estimates the bill would cost the federal government around $1 million over a five-year period.

The bill has been generally supported by both sides of the political aisle, but it’ll need to make its way past the U.S. Senate and the president before becoming law.

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Alayna Wilkening grew up reading motorsport magazines and following her grandpa around his Chevrolet dealership's showroom floor. In true Hoosier fashion, her first car was a hot pink custom cardboard "Fiero-vette" for her kindergarten Kindy 500 race. She now autocrosses a 1994 Miata with her dad, which she learned to drive the night before her first event. Alayna went to Indiana University and graduated with a degree in journalism and a minor in graphic design. As a testament to her great taste in cars, her first real one was a metallic orange 2007 Chevy HHR, which she lovingly called "The Dumptruck."