A House vote this week on the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act is the radio industry’s highest-stakes policy test in years: a chance to lock AM receivers into new cars before more automakers, especially EV makers, drop them from the dashboard.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise scheduled a standalone vote after a plan to tuck the measure into a larger transportation bill stalled. The bill — H.R. 979 in the House and S. 315 in the Senate — would require the Transportation Department to mandate AM radio as standard equipment in new vehicles, including electric models, at no extra cost to buyers. Even after a House win, the Senate would still have to act before the measure could reach President Trump, who has said he supports keeping AM in cars.
Why broadcasters say the vote is existential
Why broadcasters say the vote is existential
Radio’s business still runs through the car. Nielsen research tied to the industry has found tens of millions of monthly AM listeners and strong consumer resistance to vehicles that lack AM/FM. Stations argue that if new cars ship without AM, they lose the last guaranteed, free, no-subscription pipe into drivers — the audience that underwrites local news, talk, sports, religion, farm reports and weather.
Public safety is the political core of the campaign. AM’s long-distance signal can reach rural areas and keep working when cell towers congest or fail. FEMA’s Emergency Alert System still uses broadcast radio as a backbone. Fire chiefs, emergency managers and AARP have lined up with the National Association of Broadcasters, which has treated the bill as a must-pass after years of lobbying. Combined House and Senate co-sponsorship has topped 370, with Reps. Gus Bilirakis and Frank Pallone and Sens. Ted Cruz and Ed Markey as lead sponsors.
Public safety is the political core of the campaign. AM’s long-distance signal can reach rural areas and keep working when cell towers congest or fail. FEMA’s Emergency Alert System still uses broadcast radio as a backbone. Fire chiefs, emergency managers and AARP have lined up with the National Association of Broadcasters, which has treated the bill as a must-pass after years of lobbying. Combined House and Senate co-sponsorship has topped 370, with Reps. Gus Bilirakis and Frank Pallone and Sens. Ted Cruz and Ed Markey as lead sponsors.
The calendar is tight. Lawmakers leave town again before the midterms. Broadcasters see this week as the opening they spent years trying to force.
Why automakers are fighting it
Carmakers and allied tech groups call the bill an outdated hardware mandate. Several manufacturers — especially EV brands — have already dropped AM, citing electromagnetic interference from high-voltage motors, inverters and batteries that can make AM reception noisy or unusable. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation and EV advocates such as the Zero Emission Transportation Association say a full fix would mean shielding and redesign work they have priced in the billions of dollars over several years, with extra cost per vehicle and possible effects on EV efficiency.
They also reject the emergency-alert argument. Alerts now arrive on phones, FM, satellite and internet radio, they say; surveys after nationwide EAS tests have found only a sliver of adults heard the warning on AM. Opponents add that millions of AM-equipped cars will remain on the road for decades, so stations are not about to vanish if new models omit the tuner.
The deeper objection is regulatory philosophy. Automakers want to decide which features belong in a modern cockpit. They argue Congress should not freeze analog AM into vehicles while dashboards move toward software, streaming and connected services.
The deeper objection is regulatory philosophy. Automakers want to decide which features belong in a modern cockpit. They argue Congress should not freeze analog AM into vehicles while dashboards move toward software, streaming and connected services.
Lobbying has been heavy: disclosures have shown tens of millions of dollars in auto-industry spending against the mandate in recent cycles, with groups including GM, Toyota, Honda, Ford and Tesla active on the issue. Some opponents have also tried to pair any AM mandate with a performance-royalty fight over music on terrestrial radio — a separate industry clash that has complicated the coalition against the bill.
What happens next
A House “yes” would be a landmark for radio after repeated near-misses. It would not end the fight. The Senate still has to move, automakers will keep pressing cost and EV-interference claims, and even a signed law would go through a Transportation Department rule-making before every new car on a U.S. lot is required to include AM.
For stations, the vote is about remaining standard equipment in the one place Americans still listen most. For Detroit and EV makers, it is about who controls the dashboard — and whether Washington can require a 100-year-old band in a software-defined car.
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A House “yes” would be a landmark for radio after repeated near-misses. It would not end the fight. The Senate still has to move, automakers will keep pressing cost and EV-interference claims, and even a signed law would go through a Transportation Department rule-making before every new car on a U.S. lot is required to include AM.
For stations, the vote is about remaining standard equipment in the one place Americans still listen most. For Detroit and EV makers, it is about who controls the dashboard — and whether Washington can require a 100-year-old band in a software-defined car.