Quote:
Originally Posted by JSH
In 2022 only 47 million people listened to AM radio in a given week. Of those people they only average 2 hours of listening a day. On the other hand 275 million people listen to FM radio.
Automakers are dropping AM radio because it would cost money to keep it and the vast majority of people don't care. Pretty much anything broadcast on a radio station is also available to stream. Yes, there are some use cases where AM makes sense like remote rural areas but that is a very limited market.
(In 2013 63 million people listened to AM radio. In 2017 that was down to 59 million. Another 5 years later at it is 47 million. The trend line is very clear)
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Exactly true.
But what gets me is that they not only cut AM (which there are reasons why to do that) but they also cut the AUX port and apparently made it impossible to connect a bluetooth device (other than a phone) in an apparent attempt to make it impossible to connect your own AM radio to the car.
There still is a way... If you want AM in a Tesla you could either 1) use an AM radio with it's own speaker or 2) use an AM radio hooked up to an FM modulator so you can hear it on the car's stereo through it's FM radio.
But this is something that saddens me about new cars: uncustomizability. For an example, cars are no longer designed so you could add your own stereo. True: CD's, cassette tapes, 8-tracks and now AM are things of the past (for most people). But having a non-customizable car means you get what you get, whether it works for you or not. Whether something new suddenly pops up or not, or whether you'd like an old feature or not.
As someone who likes to fix things and is the minority that lives out in the middle of nowhere and listens to AM radio and enjoys hobbies like amateur radio, I don't like the idea of uncustomizable cars.