This characteristic could make any automotive sound like a spaceship

Automobile shopping for in 2026 is a bit… properly… tough. With so many manufacturers beneath the identical company umbrella, sharing design languages, elements, and powertrains, it could really feel like most vehicles on the lot as we speak include a considerably puny 4-cylinder turbo engine, and all sound the identical. The unhappy half right here is that the assertion isn’t all that far faraway from actuality.

I’ve two vehicles in my storage proper now. One is a compact four-seater SUV for my associate, and the opposite is my seven-seater VW Atlas, or as I name it, the ‘veedubya’. Each are outfitted with small 4-bangers, which do, in equity, ship very completely different quantities of energy. Nonetheless, they each sound the very same, and personally, I feel that ought to change. Fortunately, so do the sound engineers at Harman Automotive, who’ve devised a strategy to make each automotive sound precisely as a driver needs it to.

Harman is stuffed with sound wave wizards

And their newest venture impressed me most of all

If you have not learn any of my earlier work protecting every little thing that I noticed at Harman Automotive’s latest EXPLORE occasion, do not sweat it. You are solely lacking out on among the other cool features they’re working on. This, although, was by far the best that I noticed on the occasion, and it is due largely to the truth that we truly obtained to strive it out in a take a look at automotive that Harman stored on-site.

The general sound venture is dubbed HALOsonic Electrical Sound Synthesis, colloquially recognized (by me) as HALOsonic. When you personal a automobile with JBL, Harman Kardon, AKG, Mark Levinson, and actually most different upper-tier automotive sound programs, then Harman has already been at work in your automobile. HALOsonic is the following step up from what we see on most street vehicles as we speak, and it includes a couple of audio tips to personalize your driving expertise.

Make your automotive sound nevertheless you want

Personalization is the secret

Credit score: Harman/Pocket-lint

On the HALOsonic show, we had been proven that drivers might alter the way in which their automotive sounds within the cabin by a couple of settings screens. The characteristic permits drivers to make the ‘exhaust word’ sound nevertheless they like and pumps it into the cabin by fastidiously tuned speaker programs. Whether or not you need to make your SUV sound extra sporty, your two-seater extra throaty, and even make it sound such as you’re Han Solo piloting the Millennium Falcon, the HALOsonic system can deal with it.

You possibly can even alter the depth of the sound, so if you wish to, say, sound like an X-Wing fighter versus the Falcon, you may make that occur. The purpose, although, is that HALOsonic can utterly change the texture of what, by most accounts, is in any other case a boring automotive. My puny 4-cylinder not has to sound like itself, and if it appears like that is considerably gimmicky, I encourage you to search out an instance of any automotive firm that is not shifting to smaller, quieter, turbocharged engines. Most have already got, actually.

You might need seen it earlier than, however not this manner

All of this could sound acquainted, however it’s the packaging that makes a distinction

Credit score: Harman/Pocket-lint

Whereas Tesla and comparable EV corporations have toyed round with ‘exhaust notes’ earlier than, Harman does it a bit in a different way. As an alternative of constructing these options model-specific, Harman’s objective is to promote road-ready gear en masse to producers. Because of this all of those options could be utilized to any automotive outfitted with Harman’s infotainment software program, and consequently, can simply be dropped into no matter venture producers have going on the present juncture.

This retains manufacturing prices down, in step with their objective for the Ready StreamShare platform, and makes the case for HALOsonic all of the extra compelling. Harman’s audio platforms are already in loads of manufacturing vehicles, and the rolodex of potential prospects seems to be set to develop within the years to return.

Infotainment is the following largest automotive battleground

The battle for one of many most-viewed screens in your arsenal is heating up

There’s just one display screen in your life that’s nonetheless a wide-open battleground for management, and it is the one in your automotive. With corporations like General Motors breaking off their relationships with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, third-party corporations with deeper automotive ties, like Harman, are ready within the wings to offerinfotainment companies which are extra tailor-made to the automotive person than what is basically an extension of the mobile phone in drivers’ pockets.

There are many key bullet factors that warrant consideration going into Q1 of 2026, however except for another impending chip shortage, infotainment at massive is trending towards a kitchen-table challenge for producers when it comes to what they need and want from their very own manufacturing lineups within the coming mannequin years.