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Radios in cars are not free. Anyone buying a car that is forced to have a radio is paying for it.
Would you also agree that anyone that is buying a new car is forced to pay to have catalytic converters? What about air bags? What about seatbelts? There are lots of things the automotive manufacturers are required to include in their new vehicles...
Radios in cars are not free. Anyone buying a car that is forced to have a radio is paying for it.
Oh stop it. Each valve stem in your rims probably costs more than the AM radio in your car.
The development costs for AM radios in cars were paid off a roughly century ago. The variable material and assembly costs to include AM radio on the head unit are so negligible it would literally incur more engineering/tooling/labor and accounting costs to find, eliminate, and account for the cost savings than to just leave the necessary hardware and materials in the car.
So you know what? That's exactly what they do. That means all the firmware for AM radio is already there -- and it's STILL there in cars that have supposedly "eliminated" AM radio. They simply enable/disable a line of software code and it's done -- it doesn't cost them or you anything. And that doesn't even account for the cost savings to the general public to already have a cost-effective communications network already in place. Guess what -- you're a beneficiary of those savings too, not just the AM radio user.
Would you also agree that anyone that is buying a new car is forced to pay to have catalytic converters? What about air bags? What about seatbelts? There are lots of things the automotive manufacturers are required to include in their new vehicles...
And there are additional safety features that are OPTIONS. Air bags in the back seat? OPTION.
AM radios have not saved lives the way a seat belt has. And AM radios can be purchased without being included in the cost of a car. One cannot buy seat belts later nor can one buy air bags later. Not the same. Go to Walmart and buy an AM radio. Problem solved.
It's a few car makers, you can get AM on your cell phone, if you don't have a cell phone you can get an AM radio brand new for $15 or at a swap meet for less than $3.
If this makes you upset, then you're just looking for things to complain about and have clearly not faced much adversity in life or are just working some partisan angle.
I'm okay with retaining the AM radios for now; there's clearly a need in certain markets and I don't see an urgent reason to dispense with it. Perhaps reconsider if AM stations start shutting down en masse.
There's some logic to this. AM radio can carry further than FM and in a disaster situation.. AM could be very useful.
Now.. Who's BEHIND this? Probably the owners of every AM radio station.
But.. This isn't necessarily 'silly' or a bad thing. I'm not prepared to say it's a good idea just now.. But.. I think it could be.
I mean, hell, on a good night I can pick up the Mighty 1630 KCJJ out of Iowa City... And I'm in the upstate of South Carolina.
I live in western Colorado near the Utah border. I can't pick up these stations I've listed below all the time at night, but several times----and I use an old Zenith.
KNX-Los Angeles--1070 AM
KFAB-Omaha--1110 AM
KOMO-Seattle--1000 AM
KRVN-Lexington NE--880 AM
KOB-Albuquerque--870 AM
KBCQ-Roswell--1020 AM
WWL-New Orleans--870 AM
Over 50 million Americans, listen to AM radio in any given week. That's hardly a "fringe" audience.
By your numbers, 5 Americans out of 6 , nearly 300-million, do not listen to AM, not even a minute a week.
Most religious radio is AM.
Most daytime talk is on AM.
Most news-talk radio is AM
Most foreign language radio is AM.
Nearly all play-by-play sports is AM.
Those are fringe markets.
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Each valve stem in your rims probably costs more than the AM radio in your car. 
