A controversial bill that would require all new cars to be fitted with AM radios looks set to become a law in the near future. Yesterday, Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass) revealed that the “AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act” now has the support of 60 US Senators, as well as 246 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives, making its passage an almost sure thing. Should that happen, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would be required to ensure that all new cars sold in the US had AM radios at no extra cost.
I haven’t been following the situation, but it sounds like we haven’t even really managed to get terrestrial digital broadcast radio functioning all that well for audio. Things have kinda fragmented into three separate standards (HD Radio in the US, and Digital Audio Broadcasting and Digital Radio Mondiale in Europe).
I think that if it’s going to reach the point of mandating inclusion of newer radios, it might be preferable to sit everyone down and come up with some kind of broadly-acceptable single standard before we start baking it into legislation.
Also, if we’re gonna have a way of talking to the car’s computer remotely, for displaying alerts or whatnot, I’d rather that the protocol be cryptographically-secured from the get-go and that the modules be hardened as best we can. I don’t really want to deal with little Jimmy with a $10 USB radio and a laptop dicking up autos at scale.