No real AM or FM radio in the R2

[Alan in Tempe]

Honest question......what safety does FM radio provide?

For me, not much. However, it does provide quicker notice of road issues such as fires or wrecks or closures, and it does provide higher quality audio with HD FM stations, and it does maintain connectivity when cellular is in and out, and it does get ALL of the local stations. There are some safety aspects of a real radio, but the important benefits to me are reliable local access to high quality audio.

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[RayoRiv]

Give me YouTube Music Native, Text read/reply with all text platform ( SMS,MMS, RCS, and OTT) and I'll sign up. I couldn't care less about "Hey, Rivian" its cool but a gimmick

It may feel like a gimmick now, but I can almost guarantee it won't feel that way soon. It is a gimmick in the same way some people still don't fully get AI and think of it as gimmicky. Once it clicks you realize it is a complete and utter game changer.

 

[Yamazaki]

For me, not much. However, it does provide quicker notice of road issues such as fires or wrecks or closures, and it does provide higher quality audio with HD FM stations, and it does maintain connectivity when cellular is in and out, and it does get ALL of the local stations. There are some safety aspects of a real radio, but the important benefits to me are reliable local access to high quality audio.

I second every word of this. And I know there are any number of fixes with various subscription services... but if I had the money to throw at 100 (exaggeration used here to emphasize my point) subscriptions, I'd just get an R1.... which has an FM radio anyway.

As I said before - I'm 95% sure I'm getting the R2 anyway. There's just no other vehicle on the market that ticks as many boxes for me as the R2. But it still misses a couple.
If there were a competitor that made an "R2 clone" with an FM radio.... I would choose that over Rivian's R2.

 

[Falcon73]

Cell sites rely on electricity as much as the rest of us and while we can use solar power to keep ourselves going, most cell sites rely on standby generators with about 8 hours of gas.

I have been thru multiple hurricanes on the East Coast and had the power go out. Once for 3+ days. It was quite interesting seeing cell signals drop after about 8 hours and those w/o backups dropped immediately. This was some years ago, but I'm not aware of a requirement for cell sites to have backup power. Anyone know?

As for the value of safety of FM radio, it's about (emergency) information distribution. In the event of an emergency, any broadcast station is expected to relay emergency information. Ever heard of this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Alert_System

In practice, it is used at a regional scale to distribute information regarding imminent threats to public safety, such as severe weather situations (including flash floods and tornadoes), Amber alerts, and other civil emergencies.

Not many people can watch TV when the power is out and radio at least has been the primary alternate broadcast mechanism to distribute information to the masses in times of crisis.

Broadcast stations of any kind operate for the Public, by their very license. Does iHeart? I very much doubt it.

In the United States, all broadcast stations—both commercial and non-commercial—must legally operate in the "public interest, convenience, and necessity" to keep their licenses. This means they use public airwaves in exchange for serving their local communities.

https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/public-and-broadcasting

Will this cause me to cancel my reservation? No, but I do like to listen to some local HD2 radio stations in our current cars. I wonder if iHeart carries these.

 

[narmstrong79]

It may feel like a gimmick now, but I can almost guarantee it won't feel that way soon. It is a gimmick in the same way some people still don't fully get AI and think of it as gimmicky. Once it clicks you realize it is a complete and utter game changer.

It’s a gimmick, but I don't mean that as a pure negative. A gimmick catches your attention, but it doesn't automatically mean it's a foundational tech shift.

The reality is, being able to say 'Hey car, do X' isn't new. We've had voice-to-action for over a decade. Integrating an LLM like Gemini or ChatGPT to find a restaurant and plot a route is a cool, convenient iteration, but it's not a life-changing paradigm shift. It's just a better interface for things we already do.

Where it crosses the line from 'handy tool' to just plain goofy is the idea of having a deep, existential conversation with your dashboard. A car is a tool to get from A to B safely and efficiently. Turning it into a conversational partner feels forced and, honestly, a little weird. Not every piece of technology needs to be a 'game-changer' to be useful.

When Ai learning gets integrated it would be cool for it to be able to predict issues, learn your daily routine to optimize performance and travel, that'll be cool i guess

 

[lefkonj]

Just cracks me up as Rivian has had this since day one. My R1 has FM only and everything else is streaming. If I am out of service range I can pull bluetooth from my phones downloaded playlists. Seems like a fine solution and I haven't missed FM or AM as I would listen to them less than 1% of the time.

 

[SteveInBend]

This is getting very close to being a deal breaker for me no matter how much I otherwise love the R2. Although I live in the middle of San Diego county, cell coverage is almost dead at my house (I have to use WiFi calling on my iPhone) and very spotty in the immediate neighborhood, and encounter a lot of dead zones driving around the county. Going to a pure app-based cellular solutions is quite handicapped.

On top of that, I find that iHeart has only a minimal selection of the San Diego area FM stations, and omitted are a couple of stations I listen to the most, KPBS public radio and the excellent KSDS jazz and blues station. It appears that pretty much any of the actual live radio channels around here are not on iHeart, and the stations they do carry are all those pre-packaged stations that are mass produced elsewhere in studios and passed off as “local” radio. Check the iHeart directory to see what is carried in your area; you may be very disappointed.

For those of us who live in areas where wildfires are common, sometimes the local radio has been critical for health and safety. There was one fire where we were evacuated and numerous homes in our neighborhood were lost, and the fire took out many cell sites and remaining network was completely swamped with traffic, rendering data service unusable. Live radio coverage was essential. I’m sure people in other parts of the country prone to natural disasters have similar experience.

It is ironic that Rivian keeps touting the off road and adventure nature of the R2, but then equips it in a way that requires cellular service for almost everything like navigation and entertainment. This is really another classic example of “enshitification”, where the early promise of tech (in this case streaming) is becoming ruined by ill-advised evolutionary directions. It seems absurd that the ”fully featured” vehicle I might buy today has much less entertainment capability than any car I’ve owned in the last dozen years.

Check to see if your favorite stations are available via the TuneIn app. I did a quick check and KSDS is listed for TuneIn.

 

[timf]

I've always been annoyed by the FM radio in my R1S. It cuts out randomly during the first couple minutes of driving, and has horrible reception in urban areas. The switch to streaming seems like more of a positive than negative to me.

 

[Armeniandave]

I haven't used Am radio in 20 years and FM for probably 10+ so I'm not sure
this matters to most people. If I had spotty reception, I would just download
a whole bunch of content and stream it Bluetooth.

 

[Alan in Tempe]

Check to see if your favorite stations are available via the TuneIn app. I did a quick check and KSDS is listed for TuneIn.

I did this on the TuneIn website, and it does show my community FM station, KPUP-LP. I say play, and it clicked in with a commercial. KPUP-LP doesn't do commercials of this type, so I knew immediately TuneIn was inserting its own commercials. After a few minutes, I lost count of the many commercials, music started. Didn't sound like KPUP, so I went to the KPUP.info website where I can stream their broadcast, and when I hit play there, the music was different, and more as expected. Then I went to the KPUP music schedule looking for the song TuneIn was playing as coming from KPUP, but couldn't find that anywhere in the KPUP playlist going back hours. TuneIn said it was streaming KPUP, but that is not what I was getting. iHeart doesn't offer KPUP at all. KPUP is the only emergency broadcasting I can get on FM from my mountain home, and their programming is usually great, so I don't want to give it up.

 

[Kipa]

I did this on the TuneIn website, and it does show my community FM station, KPUP-LP. I say play, and it clicked in with a commercial. KPUP-LP doesn't do commercials of this type, so I knew immediately TuneIn was inserting its own commercials. After a few minutes, I lost count of the many commercials, music started. Didn't sound like KPUP, so I went to the KPUP.info website where I can stream their broadcast, and when I hit play there, the music was different, and more as expected. Then I went to the KPUP music schedule looking for the song TuneIn was playing as coming from KPUP, but couldn't find that anywhere in the KPUP playlist going back hours. TuneIn said it was streaming KPUP, but that is not what I was getting. iHeart doesn't offer KPUP at all. KPUP is the only emergency broadcasting I can get on FM from my mountain home, and their programming is usually great, so I don't want to give it up.

I checked on this earlier. Looks like you can get rid of the tunein commercials, and pre-rolls for a one-time $10 fee. So maybe not so bad.

 

[SteveInBend]

I have the free version of TuneIn. Some stations seem to have their own commercials. Other stations have ads inserted by TuneIn, but, for me, they only are presented right after changing stations. After that I don't here anymore ads. YMMV, I guess.

 

[mkhuffman]

You could buy this and stream radio to the R2 via Bluetooth. Probably the motors would interfere with AM, but when stopped (like camping) maybe it would work well.

https://a.co/d/0iWjQtMg

In my R1, I sometimes listen to local radio via TuneIn because the stations actually come in clearer. I am not close to most of the broadcast towers so they tend to fade out. Not with TuneIn.

 

[Universe93B]

I just learned many stations are on the TuneIn app, including many AM ones that ppl listen to - could be an option

 

[r2fb]

I checked on this earlier. Looks like you can get rid of the tunein commercials, and pre-rolls for a one-time $10 fee. So maybe not so bad.

No you can't. That only removes commercials in the app like banners and such. The audio stream still has ads inserted so it's not a proper replacement.

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