Wait: FM radio is being excluded from vehicles now? Yes. And the reason is insidious.
There’s been a fight to keep AM radio in cars for years now as auto manufacturers seek to dump it entirely. The major complaint is that the electromagnetic fields generated by EVs make AM reception unreliable. This is BS because several EV makers have figured it out. There’s even a law before the US government that would force automakers to keep AM radio.
Now there’s a move to exclude FM, too, something that I’ve quietly feared for some time. It’s not that FM isn’t popular in vehicles. The problem is that it’s free.
If you’ve gone shopping for a car recently, you’ll know that subscriptions are a big deal. Want heated seats? You’ll have to subscribe so they’ll turn on. Need remote start? You’ll have to pay monthly. Navigation and traffic information? Pay up.
In the case of radio, manufacturers want drivers to move away from free audio to subscription-based services for all news and entertainment. Not only would this generate more income, it would cut costs when it comes to making infotainment systems.
The first vehicles to ship without FM were–surprise!–Teslas, specifically the Model 3 and Model Y. The new Rivian R2 doesn’t come with an FM tuner, but instead offers the Rivian Digital Radio, which was created with iHeartRadio. Once you pay up, it works fine–unless you’re out of range of cell service. Good luck if you’re off the grid or there’s some kind of emergency when cell service goes down.
Nice try, but according to these posts on Reddit, no free radio in a vehicle is a dealbreaker for most people.
We’re being bled dry by an endless demand to subscribe to something that used to be included in the purchase price or free entirely. This has gotta stop.
