Maybe purchase an amateur radio, either walkie talkie or mobile. Then in addition to your AM radio, you will also get Weather Alert, and you can speak to your good buddies, I mean, OMs on the ham bands as well.
$77 later: Sadly, after running the Bimmercode coding, then restarting my SE there was no new entry on my MEDIA/RADIO screen to provide AM tuner access (and all my presets were gone). I used Bimmercode again to verify the "activ" status. So either more Bimmercode programming is required to create a new MEDIA/RADIO menu entry or the 2021 MINI Cooper SE does not include the secret AM radio tuner found in the BMW i3 and 2022-23 MINI Cooper SE. I wish I could have persuaded someone with a 2020-21 MINI Cooper SE who already had Bimmercode and an OBDII adapter to try this experiment for me. Oh well, I still have my 3" portable AM/FM earphone radio.
I un-aktiv'd RADIO_BAND_KW and set RADIO_BAND_MW to aktiv, but still didn't get a new menu item for AM radio (or any other detectable changes). To me, it seemed plausible the K in RADIO_BAND_KW would correspond to kHz (the frequencies used for AM radio) and the MW would correspond to MHz (the frequencies used for FM radio). EDIT!!!! I didn't realize after activating RADIO_BAND_MW and closing Bimmercode I had to go to Personalize Menu at the bottom of the MEDIA/RADIO menu and check the newly appeared AM Radio check-box. NOW I HAVE AM RADIO!!!!! Thanks to all who encouraged me to pursue my dream and to @teslarati97 who helped to achieve it. Now, 27 months in, my SE is perfect!
Perhaps MW activates the AM radio tuner and KW checks the checkbox in the Personalize Menu menu. After setting both, did you have to go to Personalize Menu to display AM Radio as an option on the MEDIA/RADIO menu? I'm not going to experiment to find out. Now that I have my AM radio by aktivating MW and then checking the AM Radio checkbox in the Personalize Menu menu, I'm a happy camper.
I've been reading the Bimmercode threads for a long time, but I haven't read anything other than the AM radio activation that I care to change. Believe it or not, I like the pedestrian warning noise and even the function of the seatbelt warning noise. If my SE's incandescent light bulbs start failing with regularity, I'll use Bimmercode to prevent the error codes that can occur with LED replacements.
For the local stations I listen to, it's working great. When a building I'm passing tries to block the signal, I can hear a touch of RFI, but nothing annoying, such as a strong buzz. However, I grew up listening to AM radio and part of its essential ambiance is audibly experiencing our electromagnetic environment. I hate listening to baseball games on FM radio because the clarity of the broadcast makes the play-by-play seem artificial to me. If AM radio goes away before all the geezers like me have expired, there may be a market for a digital "AM-sound" filter program. On my trip today, I listened to an AM radio show in which I had zero interest just because I could.
To hell with that. I want Jetsons noise! I have a few ideas to investigate. The first being to work out how to synthesise a speed sensitive Jetson noise....
However, the Doppler effect is a key feature of the Jetson's noise. You'll need a button that you'll push as you approach the targeted listener to start the Doppler-effect sequence at the right time.
The whole point of the Doppler shift is that it happens naturally. The Jetsons noise is an ideal sound for noticing change in relative speed, I think because the oscillating sound amplifies the Doppler shift. There are two options for a car noise: 1) tempo change to match vehicle speed (observable by occupants), and 2) Doppler shift to indicate position to observers outside of the vehicle. The audio I posted has vehicle-speed changes (#1), which when I think about EVs doesn't really make sense. The current SE pedestrian warning is a constant tempo (so #2), isn't it? Unfortunately for experimentation the pedestrian warning cuts out at 25 mph (or so) making it hard to recognize impact of Doppler shift. I think picking the mid-range sound of the Jetsons car is the way to maximize Doppler shift results.
Maybe you have to find the loudest tires available. No electronic voodoo magic required and it will be speed adjusted! I'm also getting a software update at the dealership today. We will see if all the coding will be wiped out.
There's a nice Doppler shift in the following video, in which a Borla Active Performance Sound for EVs is used: https://www.borla.com/products/active-performance-sound-for-electric-vehicles/#landing Perhaps we should petition Borla to permit customizable sounds to be included...
