Automobile shopping for in 2026 is a bit… effectively… troublesome. With so many manufacturers beneath the identical company umbrella, sharing design languages, elements, and powertrains, it might really feel like most vehicles on the lot right this moment include a considerably puny 4-cylinder turbo engine, and all sound the identical. The unhappy half right here is that the assertion will not be all that far faraway from actuality.
I’ve two vehicles in my storage proper now. One is a compact four-seater SUV for my accomplice, 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 totally different quantities of energy. Nevertheless, 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 approach to make each automotive sound precisely as a driver desires it to.
Harman is stuffed with sound wave wizards
And their newest challenge impressed me most of all
If you have not learn any of my earlier work overlaying every little thing that I noticed at Harman Automotive’s current EXPLORE occasion, do not sweat it. You are solely lacking out on a few of the different cool options they’re engaged on. This, although, was by far the good that I noticed on the occasion, and it is due largely to the truth that we truly acquired to attempt it out in a check automotive that Harman saved on-site.
The general sound challenge is dubbed HALOsonic Electrical Sound Synthesis, colloquially identified (by me) as HALOsonic. In the event 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 subsequent step up from what we see on most highway vehicles right this moment, and it entails a number of audio methods to personalize your driving expertise.
Make your automotive sound nevertheless you want
Personalization is the secret
On the HALOsonic show, we had been proven that drivers might modify the way in which their automotive sounds within the cabin via a number of settings screens. The function permits drivers to make the ‘exhaust notice’ sound nevertheless they like and pumps it into the cabin via rigorously tuned speaker programs. Whether or not you wish 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 may even modify the depth of the sound, so if you wish to, say, sound like an X-Wing fighter versus the Falcon, you can also 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 now not has to sound like itself, and if it appears like that is considerably gimmicky, I encourage you to seek out an instance of any automotive firm that is not shifting to smaller, quieter, turbocharged engines. Most have already got, in truth.
You might need seen it earlier than, however not this fashion
All of this could sound acquainted, but it surely’s the packaging that makes a distinction
Whereas Tesla and comparable EV firms have toyed round with ‘exhaust notes’ earlier than, Harman does it a bit otherwise. As a substitute of creating these options model-specific, Harman’s objective is to promote road-ready tools en masse to producers. Which means all of those options may be utilized to any automotive outfitted with Harman’s infotainment software program, and consequently, can simply be dropped into no matter challenge producers have going on the present juncture.
This retains manufacturing prices down, in step with their objective for the Prepared 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 clients appears set to develop within the years to return.
Infotainment is the subsequent 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 firms like Basic Motors breaking off their relationships with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, third-party firms with deeper automotive ties, like Harman, are ready within the wings to supplyinfotainment companies which are extra tailor-made to the automotive consumer than what is basically an extension of the cellular phone in drivers’ pockets.
There are many key bullet factors that warrant consideration going into Q1 of 2026, however apart from one other impending chip scarcity, infotainment at massive is trending towards a kitchen-table situation for producers by way of what they need and wish from their very own manufacturing lineups within the coming mannequin years.
