Does your AM/FM radio work reliably? Mine does not

[AltadenaAir]

I was in the area affected by the recent fires, so for the first time in a while I really, really needed access to a local news source. Cell towers were out, so using an internet radio source wasn't going to cut it. I had previously noticed that AM/FM radio on my car was "flakey", but never got around to asking for it to be fixed. (By the way, being in LA and having worked on disaster preparedness for infrastructure, everyone should realize that AM/FM is likely to be the only mobile media that will reliably work after a major disaster. But you need a receiver that works.)

But in using AM/FM for a while in the last ten days, I found it to mostly not work. Occasionally, I get it to work, but only briefly. The UI comes up with a list of stations, but I can't "play" them - just the "stop playing" button (like that on CD player) is showing, not the "play" triangle button.

Do you other folks find your radio works well?

I'm guessing that radio on this car is part of an integrated SDR module that does all the radio stuff - BT, cellular, etc. But maybe it is a separate module? Does anyone know for a fact how it is implemented? I ask, because maybe fixing my AM/FM problems will also make the BT locks interface work better (he said hopefully).

 

[Bobby]

I was in the area affected by the recent fires, so for the first time in a while I really, really needed access to a local news source. Cell towers were out, so using an internet radio source wasn't going to cut it. I had previously noticed that AM/FM radio on my car was "flakey", but never got around to asking for it to be fixed. (By the way, being in LA and having worked on disaster preparedness for infrastructure, everyone should realize that AM/FM is likely to be the only mobile media that will reliably work after a major disaster. But you need a receiver that works.)

But in using AM/FM for a while in the last ten days, I found it to mostly not work. Occasionally, I get it to work, but only briefly. The UI comes up with a list of stations, but I can't "play" them - just the "stop playing" button (like that on CD player) is showing, not the "play" triangle button.

Do you other folks find your radio works well?

I'm guessing that radio on this car is part of an integrated SDR module that does all the radio stuff - BT, cellular, etc. But maybe it is a separate module? Does anyone know for a fact how it is implemented? I ask, because maybe fixing my AM/FM problems will also make the BT locks interface work better (he said hopefully).

I use IHeartRadio to listen to KFI through CarPlay.

 

[AltadenaAir]

Yeah, like I said, Internet-based services didn't work because cell towers were out. For more than 10 days!

 

[pyle112]

Maybe carlinkit makes an adapter?

 

[Amster]

I never thought about emergencies, but it is really important for that. I haven't even tried to listen to AM/FM since the day I picked up the car. I didn't have anything else set up, so that was the only option for the drive home. I remember it working okay.

 

[Ampere]

I gave up on the radio. The AM is terrible. On all of my previous cars I could easily receive Chicago 50kw stations 140 miles away, not on the Lucid. The FM is flaky. I had to disable the HD and go with straight analog. The HD kept switching back and forth between analog and digital, even in strong signal areas driving me crazy. As others have said, it's easier to simply choose broadcast stations through one of the apps, such as iHeartRadio. I wouldn't know about CarPlay, since I'm cold and lonely with an Android phone.

 

[DeaneG]

...I had previously noticed that AM/FM radio on my car was "flakey"...

My AM and FM work fine. Twice in 2.5 years, both in the last couple months, I've had a problem like you describe. The steering wheel reset fixed it once. The second time, resetting was of no help, but it started working again on its own a couple days later. Interestingly, Spotify streaming was also down at this time, but Tidal worked fine.

 

[petergottlieb]

I had radio/sirius/Apple Music all get flaky on me today twice - they either would play a couple of seconds of audio ever 10 seconds or so or just not work at all. I did a soft reset and now everything is working again. So strange.