Comment Re: AM radio is nothing in terms of volts. (Score 5, Interesting) 307
Read this article as a primer and continue deep diving EMI if it doesn't answer all your questions. The broadcasters aren't the ones that want to get rid of AM. It's 100% the automobile manufacturers. They want to be in the automobile design business, not the antenna/radio design business, and they (quite correctly) think that the next generation of consumers is streaming music from their phones, not radio.
The public safety argument is a valid reason to mandate automobiles retain AM/FM radio, although, as someone who has lived in both tornado and hurricane ally, I've often wondered why NOAA Weather Radio isn't mandated for automobiles. It's FM and close enough (161-163MHz) to broadcast FM (89-108MHz) to not require a wholesale antenna redesign. Mandating NOAA Weather Radio would probably do more for public safety than mandating AM radio and it's a lot easier to shield FM from EMI than AM.