Should EV vehicles be required to have AM radio's?

Very little importance, with AM transmitters gradually being shut down.  Car manufacturers haven't bothered fitting AM radios for years.  It's FM and DAB now.

The switch off is causing a few problems for electricity customers on time-of-use tariffs such as Economy 7.  The Radio Timeswitch (RTS) signal is piggy-backing on the Radio 4 long wave signal, and the BBC are turning it off this year.  Anyone with a smart meter is fine, as are people with really old mechanical timeswitches.  But there are still loads of old RTS receivers out there.  Nobody seems to know what they will do when the signal stops.

It depends where you are. Most cities and around motorways are well served, both by the VHF FM service, and by the more UHF DAB services. Long and medium waves, with the gap in between for maritime traffic do cover the whole country and some distance beyond, but are indeed gradually being phased out, Medium wave AM is used for county level radio coverage at low power, and very few inductive services in hospitals etc. 

https://bdxc.org.uk/ukam.pdf recent list.

Longwave in the UK is essentially only means Radio 4 these days. which  is anecdotally used as a check by our subs to launch the UK nuclear deterrent, but in reality almost certainly not any more. But of course the long waves do go a long way, especialy at night, and if you can get far enough away from an ADSL enabled exchange to hear it there are plenty of European stations still active,  but for the same reasons as the UK, rather less than say ten years ago.

(  https://www.businessinsider.com/bbc-radio-show-may-be-preventing-nuclear-apocalypse-2018-8 )

Long and medium wave AM services are very few compared to VHF services https://bdxc.org.uk/ukfm.pdf but of course this is in part due to the shorter range, and the interference problem of modern electronics raising the noise floor.

Long ago ofcom decided that while TV and VHF radio were protected and they and or the BBC would investigate complaints of interference, LW and MW have no such legal protection.

Oddly there are now a few UK and Continental, mainly Dutch, pirate stations kicking out at the top end of the MW band around 1.5MHz mostly weekends only to avoid ofcom, but I can't imagine they have any  great audience, certainly no-one with an indoor antenna or table top portable radio is going to be far enough away from the dreaded switch mode supply hash, similar to the electric car motor drive problem unless they have an almost electronics free house.

That said my car, a 2016 Vauxhall corsa, has a LW/MW/ FM radio and the self interference is not really an issue, and also I've not noticed any issue when EVs go by. Its just rubbish in town due to the high noise levels !

Mike.

Your comment about Pirate AM stations, brings back memories of listening to Radio Luxembourg and AFN in my youth.

People listened to these stations because the BBC would not play the original US hit records - The BBC would only play versions made with British artists.

TTFN

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay FL

Actually it was not an anti America thing, more of a general censorious attitude, as they were not that keen on UK artists either, or at least not those who sang about topics and behaviour of interest to teenagers but considered risque for general consumption.

But yes the fading in and out of radio Luxembourg or later the many sea pirates especially with the swirling of the atmospherics late at night had its own hypnotic attraction many years ago. (Cue song  'Pirate of the Airwaves, here is my request')
Of course the original 1932 Long Wave radio Luxembourg transmitter was actually so powerful (figures between 100-200kW radiated are usually quoted) as to actually influence the ionosphere, rather than just be pushed about by it, and gave its name to that modulation affecting reception of other radio stations the Luxemburg-Gorky effect.

Mike.

However there was still Jack Jackson on the BBC late at night.

As I lived in London at that time I was able to attend the recording of BBC programs on Sunday's (example "The Goon show" ).

 Peter Brooks

However there was still Jack Jackson on the BBC late at night.

As I lived in London at that time I was able to attend the recording of BBC programs on Sunday's (example "The Goon show" ).

 Peter Brooks