In an age when a car dashboard can stream Spotify, display satellite imagery, make phone calls, provide turn-by-turn directions and occasionally demand a software update before breakfast, Congress has decided there is one piece of technology American motorists still need.
AM radio.
The House of Representatives passed the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act of 2025, H.R. 979, by voice vote on September 15. The legislation would require automakers to provide access to AM broadcast stations in new passenger vehicles sold in the United States without charging consumers an additional fee.
At first glance, the legislation has the unmistakable appearance of Congress riding to the rescue of a technology that predates commercial television.
The reason for the bill is considerably more practical.
The EV Problem
Automakers have increasingly removed AM receivers from some electric vehicles. Electric motors, high-voltage systems and other components can generate electromagnetic interference that degrades AM reception.
Rather than engineer around the interference, some manufacturers simply stopped providing AM reception in certain models.
Congress noticed.
The Congressional Budget Office says the legislation would primarily affect electric vehicle manufacturers that have already removed AM equipment or announced plans to do so. CBO estimates that roughly 2 million to 2.5 million vehicles per year would require updated radio equipment under the legislation.
The agency does not expect compliance to break the automotive industry’s piggy bank. CBO estimates the mandate would cost manufacturers several million dollars annually, primarily for software updates and modifications to radio components. [Congressional Budget Office, March 16, 2026]
The automobile industry has nevertheless objected to the mandate. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation has argued that Congress is requiring manufacturers to preserve a particular technology rather than focusing on the broader capability of delivering emergency information to motorists.
That distinction gets to the heart of the debate.
AM Radio Is Part of the Emergency System
Congress is not preserving AM because lawmakers are worried Americans might lose access to talk radio, baseball games or the peculiar experience of driving through three states while listening to the same distant station after sunset.
The primary argument is emergency communications.
Broadcast radio remains part of the federal Emergency Alert System and the broader Integrated Public Alert and Warning System. The FCC identifies analog AM and FM stations among Emergency Alert System participants, and says FEMA’s national emergency message is distributed through a network that includes highly resilient AM broadcast stations and satellite services. [Federal Communications Commission, FCC 25-50]
That matters for reasons that extend beyond disasters knocking modern communications systems offline.
Some Places Start With the Backup System
Emergency communications discussions often begin with a familiar scenario. A hurricane, wildfire, earthquake or widespread power failure damages cellular and internet infrastructure, leaving residents searching for another way to receive information.
But there is another category of American community where the problem exists before the emergency begins.
Large rural and remote areas still have uneven access to cellular voice and broadband service. The FCC continues to collect and map mobile coverage by technology, speed and even whether the user is stationary outdoors or traveling inside a vehicle. The existence of those federal coverage datasets reflects a simple reality. Modern wireless service is extensive, but it is not universal. [Federal Communications Commission, Broadband Data Collection]
AM broadcasting has historically filled some of those geographic gaps. The FCC itself has described AM stations as frequently providing the only radio service available to listeners in certain circumstances, particularly people living in or traveling through rural areas. The Commission has also called AM a crucial service to rural communities and noted its role in providing information during emergencies and natural disasters. [Federal Communications Commission, FCC 07-218]
That creates an important distinction in the debate over removing AM receivers from automobiles.
In one community, AM may become useful because the cellular network failed.
In another, AM may already be the communications system with the greatest practical reach.
A smartphone can contain extraordinary communications technology and still display “No Service” when the nearest functioning network is beyond reach. Internet-based emergency systems face the same geographic limitation when connectivity is unavailable. FM radio generally operates over shorter practical distances than lower-frequency AM broadcasting.
For emergency planners, this means the value of AM cannot necessarily be measured by asking how many Americans listen to it during an ordinary morning commute. The smaller population living or traveling beyond reliable cellular, broadband or FM coverage may be precisely the population for whom an AM receiver remains most valuable.
And disasters can make the distinction worse. FEMA maintains communications-impact data showing cell-tower outages during major incidents using information collected through the FCC’s Disaster Information Reporting System. During Hurricane Helene, for example, the FCC separately tracked outages affecting wireless infrastructure and broadcast stations across the affected states. [Federal Emergency Management Agency, TEMPO Communications Impacts]
The argument for AM, then, is not simply that it survives when newer technology fails. In some parts of the country, newer technology may never have provided equivalent coverage in the first place.
Congress Built an Expiration Date Into the Mandate
The legislation does something else that makes it more interesting than a simple technology-preservation bill.
The requirement expires.
H.R. 979 directs the Department of Transportation to issue the AM-access rule within one year of enactment. The rule would sunset eight years after the legislation becomes law.
Congress also wants someone to determine whether AM is actually as important to emergency communications as its defenders maintain.
The bill directs the Government Accountability Office to examine the role AM broadcasts received in passenger vehicles play in disseminating emergency alerts through IPAWS. GAO would have one year to report its findings.
DOT would also be required to report to Congress at least every five years on the effects of the regulation.
CBO estimates that implementing the federal portions of the legislation, including work by DOT and GAO, would cost approximately $1 million between 2026 and 2031. [Congressional Budget Office, March 16, 2026]
The structure effectively creates a temporary preservation order while the government studies the technology it is preserving.
Keep the radios. Study whether they are still necessary. Revisit the question later.
There are worse approaches to infrastructure policy.
Old Does Not Necessarily Mean Obsolete
The automobile industry’s objection deserves consideration.
If emergency warnings can reliably reach motorists through cellular networks, satellite systems, FM broadcasting and newer digital technologies, permanently requiring one specific communications technology could eventually become difficult to justify.
Congress appears to have left room for that possibility through the sunset provision and GAO study.
But the legislation also raises a broader question about the country’s increasingly interconnected infrastructure.
Technological progress usually rewards efficiency, speed and capability. Emergency preparedness sometimes rewards something different.
Redundancy.
A communications system does not necessarily have to be sophisticated to remain useful. Sometimes its value comes from the fact that it operates differently from everything surrounding it.
AM broadcasting is approaching its second century as a mass communications technology. It is noisy. It is susceptible to interference. Its audio quality will not inspire anyone shopping for premium speakers.
Yet Congress is now considering whether that stubborn old signal may still deserve a place inside one of the most technologically sophisticated machines most Americans own.
The House has made its decision for now.
The Senate gets the next turn of the dial.
Bureaucracy Times 