More lawmakers are voicing their support for keeping AM radio in new vehicles.
Senator Rand Paul says incentives for electric vehicle purchases should be removed until manufacturers decide to keep the popular rural medium.
“Some of the new electric cars, what they’re saying is, is that the battery is so strong that it disrupts the am signal. So there’s an extra cost if you want to have AM radio in electric cars. And what I’ve said is if this is a problem for AM radio, maybe we shouldn’t be subsidizing these cars. You get people $7,500 per car to buy them and it’s really the only reason people are buying electric cars and it’s still a small percentage. It’s about 1 to 2% of the public has an electric car, and so it probably wouldn’t grow if we got rid of the subsidies, and then we wouldn’t have the AM radio problem.”
Since these debates began, several automakers, like Ford, have backtracked their plans to remove AM radio from new vehicles.
