SiriusXM’s year-old $530 million acquisition of Agero's connected vehicle services business (see 1308160071) "continues to produce good results," SiriusXM CEO Jim Meyer said on a quarterly earnings call Tuesday. "It has brought us even closer to the OEMs and opened the door to long-term cooperation on a variety of decisions relating to the next generation of connected vehicles." SiriusXM is "actively engaged with our existing OEM customers in defining the connected vehicle services that will be deployed in their vehicles over the following years," Meyer said. "The safety, security and convenience side of the connected vehicle is important, but so is our ability to innovate in the connected car on the audio side and integrate satellite radio with the benefits of two-way connectivity." Asked in Q&A whether SiriusXM was beginning to see "meaningful" penetration of new cars in its "mix" with Internet connectivity built in, Meyer said General Motors has begun rolling out LTE in its vehicles "at a pretty aggressive rate." But he cautioned that "GM's implementation of how they want that to work ultimately is still in a variety of phases in their vehicles." Still, "there's no question, built-in connectivity in vehicles is beginning to increase and, I think, will continue to increase every year going forward for many, many years," Meyer said. "I think this is an incredible opportunity for SiriusXM. I constantly get questions from analysts and investors about, ‘Isn't this bad for your business?’ And my answer to that question is, ‘Are you kidding me?’" Meyer thinks the rise of the connected car will "let us do a lot of exciting things for the next 10 years," he said. But as for giving a solid answer on the question about whether there has been any meaningful business impact yet, "we're just going to have to wait several months to make sure none of this is a head fake," Meyer said. "I've learned now, over the 10 years, we need to watch for several months to see how these trends roll out. But I promise you, we're watching it. And when we think we really understand what's going on, we'll be very public about it."

Multifunction, cross-linked infotainment systems and related electronics are a “growing reliability plague” for many car brands, Consumer Reports said Monday. First-year models from Cadillac, Fiat, Ford, Honda, Infiniti, Jeep and Ram have seen “significant problem rates from infotainment bugs and glitches,” it said. Of the 17 problem areas Consumer Reports asks about in its Annual Reliability Survey, the category encompassing in-car electronics generated more complaints than any other category, it said. Problems included multi-use controllers that don’t function properly, unresponsive touch screens and challenges pairing phones to the vehicle, the report said. “Infotainment system problems generally don't exist in a vacuum," said Jake Fisher, director-automotive testing at Consumer Reports. Cars with a lot of in-vehicle electronic issues “usually have plenty of other troubles, too,” Fisher said. Infinity’s Q50 sedan tops the list of problem vehicles in the report with more than 20 percent of owners reporting a glitch. The Infiniti QX60 SUV, also rated low in reliability, dropping Infiniti’s reliability rank 14 points to 20th overall, the farthest drop of any of the 28 brands this year, Consumer Reports said. Some carmakers showed improvement in infotainment problems, it said. “While hardly trouble-free, updates and changes to Ford and Lincoln's notorious MyTouch systems have made them less troublesome year after year,” Consumer Reports said. In 2011, the Ford Explorer had a 10 percent infotainment complaint rate and peaked at 28 percent, but the 2014 Explorer's revised system improved to a 3 percent complaint rate for the same trouble areas, it said. Honda appears to have fixed a glitch with HondaLink that kept the redesigned Accord V6 off of last year’s recommended vehicle list, and the vehicle is now recommended, Consumer Reports said, and Chrysler's UConnect touch-screen system “was buggy in its first iteration but recent software revisions may be ironing out the wrinkles." The survey was sent to more than 8 million subscribers, and 1.1 million responses were received. The survey asks about subscribers' experiences with their vehicles over the course of the previous 12 months and covers 10 model years -- from brand-new models to models that are 10 years old, it said.

The FTC commended the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for taking privacy and security concerns into account in a rulemaking on vehicle-to-vehicle communication capability for passenger cars and light trucks, in comments filed at NHTSA. In February, following extensive testing, the U.S. Department of Transportation said it was moving forward on vehicle-to-vehicle warning systems as part “the next generation” of auto safety improvements (http://1.usa.gov/1bkqG1L). The rulemaking has been of concern to the telecom industry because the spectrum band automakers will use, the 5.850-5.925 GHz band, is adjacent to a band targeted by the FCC for unlicensed use on a secondary basis (see 1409050030). The FTC said it supports “implementation of a deliberative, process-based approach to address privacy and security risks.” NHTSA appears ready to “ensure that the V2V system will contain multiple technical, physical, and organizational controls to minimize privacy risks, including the likelihood of vehicle tracking by commercial entities,” the FTC said (http://1.usa.gov/1D7RLCE). “The Commission appreciates NHTSA’s explanation of the substantial steps it took as part of its interim privacy impact assessment, and looks forward to reviewing the results of the final assessment.” NHTSA also appears to have the designed the system in a way that “limits the amount of data collected and stored to that which serves its intended safety purposes,” FTC said. “NHTSA’s attention to potential security issues is equally thorough and demonstrates a clear commitment to creating both a functional and secure communications system based on research efforts over more than a decade.” CTIA's comments said NHTSA lacks statutory authority to adopt Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards for mobile devices, apps or software (http://bit.ly/1xiapWG). The comments were filed in docket NHTSA-2014-0022.

AT&T isn't concerned about the FCC Media Bureau decision Wednesday to stop the shot clock on its review of the telco's plan to buy DirecTV (see 1410220058), AT&T Chief Financial Officer John Stephens said Wednesday on a call with analysts. “We’re still optimistic about the transaction,” Stephens said. “The stopping of the clock is not an uncommon or rare experience and it has something to do with other issues than the benefit of our deal or the merits of our deal.” AT&T still anticipates approval of the deal in the “originally announced one year kind of time frame,” he said. The companies unveiled the deal in May. AT&T earnings came in at 63 cents per share in Q3, a penny below analyst estimates, the carrier said. Net income fell 21 percent from the same quarter last year on higher operating expenses. Revenue was $32.9 billion in the quarter, a 2.5 percent increase over the previous year. Wireless made up 56 percent of total revenue, AT&T said. Headed into the AWS-3 auction, AT&T reported $3.5 billion in free cash flow. The company added 785,000 postpaid subscribers, more than twice as many as in Q3 last year. Connected device net adds were 1,275,000, which includes more than 500,000 connected cars, AT&T said (http://soc.att.com/1t70QuJ).

Harman, working with Lotus Engineering, developed noise management technology for cars that will enable automakers to use lighter-weight materials and improve fuel economy without raising vehicle noise levels, the company said in a news release Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1CVE0ai). Harman’s HALOsonic Road Noise Cancellation (RNC) technology is said to minimize unwanted noise generated when vehicle tires roll across the road surface by employing “anti-noise” to counteract road noise. The Harman/Lotus technology -- using accelerometers attached to the vehicle’s chassis -- measures the correlation of vibrations coming from the road with resulting noise inside the vehicle cabin and then creates, through proprietary software, inverse sound waves that cancel the noise using the car’s audio system, Harman said. HALOsonic RNC can reduce the peaks of the noise across the target frequency range, creating a quieter experience within the vehicle cabin while ensuring that only wanted engine or road noise, and not music signals within a similar audio range, is canceled, Harman said. Michael Mauser, president of Harman’s lifestyle division, said drivers are less likely to become tired or distracted if there’s less road noise, and by reducing road noise automakers can “exploit lightweight materials without the risk that the perception of quality and harmony in the car will be compromised."

The "user-oriented subsystems" of the Tesla Model S electric vehicle "have more in common with a tablet or smartphone than they do with a conventional automobile," IHS said Tuesday in a preliminary "teardown" report (http://bit.ly/1vZVLDO). In designing the Model S, Tesla "really wanted to do things differently and employed virtual controls -- rather than physical knobs and buttons -- to take over the user experience," IHS said. "This approach required a major investment in big displays and touch panels, similar to the approach Apple took when designing the iPhone and iPad." The electronics "cost structure" of the Model S, the use of large displays in the cabin and its use of touch-screen controls make "the Tesla experience more like a media tablet or high-end smartphone than a traditional automobile," it said. "It’s like looking at the components from the latest mobile device from an Apple iPad or Samsung Galaxy product. When it comes to the user-facing segment of the Model S’s electronics, the company has radically departed from business-as-usual in the automotive market." The "huge" 17-inch display and touch screen on the Model S are "much larger than the average automotive infotainment interface," it said. Use of an Nvidia Tegra 3, 1.4-GHz quad-core processor gives the Model S "computing power in the same league with recent smartphone and tablet designs," it said.