House Passes Bill to Make AM Radio Standard in New Vehicles
The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act on September 15, 2026, by voice vote. The bill would require AM radio to be built into new cars, trucks and SUVs at no additional charge to buyers. TechCrunch It now heads to the U.S. Senate.
The bill would direct the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the federal auto-safety regulator, to require AM radio as standard equipment in new passenger vehicles. In the 119th Congress the House measure is H.R.979 and the Senate companion is S.315. Both would require the Department of Transportation to issue a rule requiring AM radio capability as standard in all new passenger vehicles. Congress.gov
Congressman Josh Gottheimer supported the House-passed bill. House Press Release Senators Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) co-sponsored the Senate version and applauded House passage. Senate Press Release Earlier in 2026 the Senate version secured 60 co-sponsors.
The compliance work would fall unevenly across automakers. BMW, Rivian, Tesla and Volvo are among automakers that no longer have traditional AM receivers in vehicles. A traditional receiver picks up over-the-air broadcast signals directly. Tesla does not include AM receivers in the base versions of its Model 3 and Model Y vehicles. Rivian's R2 SUV has no built-in AM or FM receiver but offers AM/FM radio through iHeartRadio for free. Ford had removed AM radio from some vehicles but has since reversed course.
The House action follows a longer legislative effort. In May 2023, lawmakers introduced legislation to bar automakers from eliminating AM broadcast radio in new vehicles, citing safety as a reason. Reuters H.R.979, the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act of 2025, was introduced in the House on February 5, 2025.
In my view, the operative language is less about radio nostalgia than about product definition. Standard equipment at no additional charge would close off the subscription or trim-level workaround, where AM becomes a paid add-on or is limited to higher-priced models. Capabilities to be defined by rule leaves room for regulators to decide whether an IP stream of an AM station, delivered over a data connection, satisfies the requirement or whether a terrestrial tuner that receives broadcast signals from the air is required.
From an engineering standpoint, that distinction shapes the work ahead. A tuner, antenna system and audio path under direct vehicle control behave differently from a network-dependent app. They have different failure modes, different coverage assumptions and different dependencies on connectivity, accounts and data plans, much as a broadcast TV antenna works under different conditions than a streaming video app. For teams that consolidated infotainment around centralized compute and streaming interfaces, reintroducing broadcast reception is integration work, not research. Validation across trims and regions still takes time.
The broader context here is continuity, and it suggests a workable path. Broadcast radio has persisted through successive in-vehicle shifts, from cassettes to CDs to Bluetooth to full connectivity, because it remains cheap to receive and simple to operate. Passage alone would not put radios in dashboards. It would instruct the Department of Transportation to write the technical requirement, including what counts as compliant reception and how it is tested. Automakers with AM already present face minimal change. Those relying on streaming proxies, as in the R2 approach, face a clearer redesign decision if the final rule insists on over-the-air capability. If signed into law, AM would join the short list of features treated as baseline rather than optional, and engineers would treat it as a fixed constraint to design around while keeping a simple backup for drivers.
