Sean Hannity speaks out on electric vehicles ditching AM radio

Fox News’ Sean Hannity is sounding the alarm about the growing trend in the auto industry to remove AM radio from new electric vehicles (EVs). 

Several prominent car manufacturers, including Ford, Volkswagen, BMW, Mazda, Volvo and Tesla, are tuning out AM radio from their latest EV models due to alleged interference between electromagnetic frequencies from their motors and AM radio frequencies, which create a buzzing noise and a weak signal.

Hannity isn’t buying that excuse, telling Fox News Digital, “It’s incomprehensible to me.”

“It’s not complicated to put in a radio system that allows you to have AM FM, Sirius XM, or the ability to plug in your own music from your own phone,” Hannity told Fox News Digital in an interview. “And I think people want more options, not less options. And this would be a direct hit politically on conservative talk radio in particular, which is what most people go to AM radio to listen to.”

“So is there a political component to it? Certainly feels like it,” he added. 

Hannity, whose program “The Sean Hannity Show” is broadcasted on over 700 AM and FM radio stations across the country, defended AM radio stations, saying “it’s not fair” for them to be eliminated as an option in vehicles.

“People paid a lot of money for those signals, and they pay that money to, you know, the federal government [that] gives out these licenses. What’s the point if they’re going to take away a significant percentage of the population’s ability to even get the station they would listen to the most while they’re driving?” Hannity wondered. 

And since the federal government grants licenses to radio stations, it’s in his view that Congress has the “responsibility” to “protect that which they oversee, and they shouldn’t have a political agenda associated with it or behind it.”

But it’s not just Hannity and other conservatives that are voicing concern over the absence of AM radio in new EVs. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who sits on the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, has been speaking out against the AM radio purge, specifically for the emergency-alert system that is broadcasted during natural disasters and other emerging calamities. 

Hannity predicted Markey’s concerns will fall on deaf ears as the Biden administration goes full-steam ahead with its green agenda, insisting Americans “don’t want” EVs. 

“This is all part of what I call the Biden New Green Deal, climate alarmist religious cult,” Hannity said. “They want to take away our gas stove, they want to take away our refrigerator, they want to take away a whole host of other things. And now they’re going to force electric vehicles that cost dramatically more on the American people. Then they have to pay for charging stations. Americans want gas-powered cars – polls show it and it costs less. And in these very tough inflationary times where over 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, they simply cannot afford this new climate alarmists religious cult tax, because that’s what it is.”

The Fox News host went on to stress that Democrats have targeted conservative radio ever since the Obama-era FCC eliminated the Fairness Doctrine, a rule that required broadcasters to address controversial issues important to the public while presenting differing viewpoints. 

“We have all liberal outlets, almost every major newspaper is liberal, three networks that are liberal. Of the three major cable networks, two are hardcore left-wing,” Hannity said. “So for half the country that is conservative, they want the opportunity to hear points of view and the news and information that they’re not going to get from the mainstream media, and that’s now being robbed from them and taken away from them.”