The US House of Representatives passed the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act unanimously on Tuesday. Every single member voted yes. The bill now moves to the Senate, where a companion version already has support from 60 senators — enough to beat a filibuster. Pass the Senate, land on President Trump’s desk, and every new car sold in America gets AM radio in cars as standard equipment. No exceptions.
Congress first took this up in May 2023 after car brands started removing AM radio from electric vehicles without telling buyers. Three years later the House finally voted on it.
What the Bill Actually Does
The AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act directs the Secretary of Transportation to issue a rule requiring AM radio in all new passenger vehicles sold in the US. Automakers would have one year after the rule is issued to comply, then two more years before it takes effect. So even if the bill passes tomorrow, AM radio in cars is still a few years away from being mandatory on showroom floors.
The bill also requires any automaker selling cars without AM radio in cars to tell buyers clearly that the feature is missing. No more quiet omissions — it has to be disclosed.
Why Electric Cars Dropped AM Radio
Tesla quietly removed AM radio in cars from their lineup in 2018. Most owners probably didn’t notice until they tried tuning in. BMW went further back — no EV in their entire lineup has ever had AM radio, not since the original i3 launched in 2013. Mazda, Volkswagen and Rivian did the same thing. Ford made the boldest move in 2023, announcing they would strip AM radio from every car they sell — not just electric ones, petrol cars too. That went down badly. Ford reversed the decision within weeks once the bill landed in Congress and the complaints started coming in.
The technical reason is straightforward. Electric motors emit electromagnetic interference that sits right on the AM frequency band — between 535 kilohertz and 1705 kilohertz. That interference makes AM reception so poor it’s essentially unusable. Rather than spending money to shield the electronics and fix the problem, most EV makers decided to drop AM altogether.
FM radio in cars doesn’t have this problem. Cellular and internet streaming don’t either. For most daily driving situations, nobody notices AM is gone.
Does This Affect Hybrid Cars Too?
Hybrids are less affected than full EVs. A traditional hybrid still uses a petrol engine for much of its operation, and the electric motor runs at lower power levels than in a full EV. The interference is present but manageable — most hybrid manufacturers have kept AM radio in cars without significant problems.
Plug-in hybrids sit somewhere in between. When running on the electric motor alone, the interference can appear. When the petrol engine kicks in, it largely disappears. Most plug-in hybrid buyers don’t notice an issue.
Full battery EVs — where the electric motor is running constantly — produce the most persistent interference. That’s where AM radio in cars becomes genuinely problematic and where most of the removals have happened.
The Emergency Case for AM Radio in Cars
More than 4,300 AM stations are still active in the US and Nielsen counts over 80 million Americans tuning in every month — about 23 percent of the country.
Hurricane Katrina knocked out cell towers across Louisiana and Mississippi for weeks. The California wildfires took out towers across entire counties. Midwest tornado outbreaks do the same thing in minutes. Through all of it, AM radio in cars kept going. A single AM transmitter reaches further than any cell tower — hundreds of miles in some conditions — and broadcasts whether the internet is working or not.
In farm country, AM radio is on before sunrise — weather, grain prices, local news. When a tornado warning goes out in a rural county with patchy cell coverage, the emergency manager puts it on AM. That’s not nostalgia. That’s the only channel that reaches everyone.
The National Association of Farm Broadcasting, the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Farmers Union all support it. Those organizations don’t show up for minor legislation.
Can You Add AM Radio to an EV That Doesn’t Have It?
Not easily. In older cars there was a standard slot behind the dashboard — a DIN slot — where any radio unit could be swapped in or out in an afternoon. Modern EVs don’t work that way. A Tesla Model 3 has one large touchscreen that controls everything — music, navigation, climate, mirrors. A BMW iX is the same. The radio isn’t a separate component you can pull out and replace. It’s software running inside a screen that’s bolted to the car.
Some owners have paid professional installers to retrofit AM radio into their EVs. The installation involves new wiring throughout the car, a separate tuner unit mounted somewhere out of sight and holes cut into a dashboard that was designed without any of that in mind. Professional installers charge $300 to $600 to do the job. And after all that, you get a separate radio unit stuck inside a car that originally cost $50,000 — sitting there looking like it was added in someone’s garage.
There’s another issue nobody talks about. Fitting an aftermarket AM radio to an EV doesn’t fix the electromagnetic noise the electric motor produces — that noise sits right on the AM frequency band. You’d still get static and broken reception. The only real fix is shielding built into the car during manufacturing. That can’t be added later.
If AM radio in cars is something you rely on and you’re shopping for an EV right now, the table below shows which manufacturers still include it from the factory.
Which Cars Currently Have No AM Radio
| Automaker | AM Radio in EVs |
|---|---|
| Tesla | No — removed in 2018 |
| BMW | No — never offered in EV lineup |
| Mazda | No |
| Volkswagen | No |
| Rivian | No |
| Toyota | Yes — in some EVs |
| Chevrolet | Yes — in some EVs |
| Ford | Yes — reversed 2024 decision |
What It Costs to Fix
The Congressional Budget Office looked at this. The radio hardware itself isn’t expensive — most EVs already have FM radio equipment and adding AM capability to that is a relatively minor cost.
The harder problem is shielding electric motors from interfering with AM reception. Nobody has published a clear number on what that engineering costs per vehicle because it varies by platform and architecture. The CBO estimates the federal government’s administrative cost of the bill at around $1 million over five years — that’s the government’s cost, not the automakers’.
The bill would affect roughly 2 to 2.5 million vehicles per year according to the CBO. Those are the EVs currently sold without AM radio in cars that would need to be brought into compliance.
What Other Countries Are Doing
The UK and Europe have a different problem with AM radio — governments there have been actively switching off AM transmitters to save money, regardless of what cars can receive. Germany switched off its last national AM stations in 2015. The UK has been running a digital radio switchover for years and AM audiences have collapsed.
The US situation is the opposite. American AM stations are still active and commercially viable — over 4,300 of them. The threat in America isn’t the stations disappearing, it’s the cars that can no longer pick them up.
Japan has taken a different approach. Several Japanese automakers developed shielding solutions that allow AM radio to work in EVs despite motor interference. Toyota’s hybrid and EV lineup retains AM radio partly because Japanese engineers solved the interference problem rather than abandoning the feature.
The Bill Still Needs a Senate Vote
Senators Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Ted Cruz of Texas wrote the Senate version together — a Democrat and a Republican, which tells you something about how uncontroversial this bill actually is. It cleared the Senate Commerce Committee and has 60 cosponsors — the threshold needed to stop any senator from blocking a vote. Bills rarely reach that number.
The House voted unanimously. The Senate has 60 cosponsors ready. All that’s left is a Senate floor vote and President Trump signing it. This bill is closer to becoming law than most people realize.
FAQ
What is the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act?
The US House passed it unanimously this week. If the Senate passes it and President Trump signs it, every new car sold in America must include AM radio in cars as standard equipment — no extra charge, no subscription.
Why are electric cars sold without AM radio?
Electric motors emit interference on the AM frequency band that makes reception unusable. Most EV makers decided removing AM was cheaper than fixing the interference problem.
Which car brands don’t include AM radio?
Tesla removed it in 2018. BMW never had it in any EV. Mazda, Volkswagen and Rivian don’t include it either. Toyota, Chevrolet and Ford still put AM radio in at least some of their electric models.
Is the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act now law?
Not yet. The House voted unanimously but it still has to clear the Senate and land on President Trump’s desk before it means anything for car buyers.
Why do people still need AM radio in their car?
Cell towers go down in hurricanes, wildfires and tornadoes. AM radio in cars keeps broadcasting through all of it. Farmers use it every morning for weather and grain prices.
When would the AM radio requirement actually take effect?
If passed, the Secretary of Transportation has one year to issue the rule, then automakers have two more years to comply. The earliest real-world impact would be three years after the bill becomes law.
