This characteristic could make any automotive sound like a spaceship

Automotive shopping for in 2026 is a bit… effectively… tough. With so many manufacturers below the identical company umbrella, sharing design languages, components, and powertrains, it could 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 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. Nevertheless, they each sound the very same, and personally, I believe 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 undertaking impressed me most of all

If you have not learn any of my earlier work masking every part that I noticed at Harman Automotive’s latest EXPLORE occasion, do not sweat it. You are solely lacking out on a number of the other cool features they’re working 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 received to strive it out in a check automotive that Harman stored on-site.

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

Make your automotive sound nonetheless you want

Personalization is the secret

Credit score: Harman/Pocket-lint

On the HALOsonic show, we had been proven that drivers may alter the way in which their automotive sounds within the cabin by means of a couple of settings screens. The characteristic permits drivers to make the ‘exhaust be aware’ sound nonetheless they like and pumps it into the cabin by means of fastidiously tuned speaker methods. 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’ll be able to even alter 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 seems 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 may need seen it earlier than, however not this fashion

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

Credit score: Harman/Pocket-lint

Whereas Tesla and comparable EV firms have toyed round with ‘exhaust notes’ earlier than, Harman does it a bit otherwise. As a substitute of constructing these options model-specific, Harman’s aim is to promote road-ready tools en masse to producers. Which means that 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 undertaking producers have going on the present juncture.

This retains manufacturing prices down, in step with their aim 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 clients appears set to develop within the years to come back.

Infotainment is the subsequent greatest automotive battleground

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

There’s just one display in your life that’s nonetheless a wide-open battleground for management, and it is the one in your automotive. With firms like General 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 offerinfotainment companies which might be extra tailor-made to the automotive consumer than what is actually an extension of the cellphone in drivers’ pockets.

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