Ford Urged To Extend AM Radio In EVs Beyond '24

Ford CEO Jim Farley

When Ford Motor Co.’s president and CEO, Jim Farley, reversed course to keep AM radio in all-electric vehicles at least through the 2024 model year, he was proving one of the main points used by advocates of that form of communication: It remains a vital part of the way that many Americans talk with one another.

Probably inadvertently, Farley made the case for this interpretation in a recent conversation with Paul W. Smith, the venerable talk-show host on WJR-AM. Smith thanked Farley for responding to the host’s off-the-air appeal of Ford’s initial decision to leave AM out of new versions of the F-150 Lightning pickup and Mach-E Mustang, according to Dale Buss at The Detroit News.

“I told the White House and all the government leaders that it was our conversation that led to us [re-]considering our approach,” Farley said on Smith’s show earlier this month, citing the power of Smith’s leadership in the community and Ford’s “listen[ing] with both ears.”

After speaking with policy leaders about the importance of AM broadcast radio as a part of the emergency alert system, we've decided to include it on all 2024 @Ford & @LincolnMotorCo vehicles. For any owners of Ford EVs without AM broadcast capability, we’ll offer a software…

— Jim Farley (@jimfarley98) May 23, 2023

Case made, in microcosm. Farley still hasn’t committed to Ford extending AM radio in its EVs indefinitely, and that’s a strong concern — one that should be tracked. Other carmakers, including most Europeans and most EV-only startups, remain without AM in their EVs, citing the engineering challenges of coping with extra signal interference by battery arrays. General Motors and Stellantis, among others, remain unsatisfyingly on the fence.

But maintaining AM radio in EVs costs only relative pennies, writes Buss. And its presumed eventual elimination from all cars and trucks would create an incalculable deficit in the collective national ability to communicate. The most obvious way would be the most-cited one: AM radio is crucial for its ability to provide broadcast alerts on a hardened, non-internet-based emergency system that comes into play for news about Amber alerts, severe weather, and more.