Here I am on vacation, so I decided to program the autostore stuff, to quickly find any local radio stations. The manual sayeth:


AS1–2 (Autostore): The stations that can be received best in an AM or FM band can be searched for and stored automatically through the autostore function. Each band has two autostore lists (AS 1, AS 2), in each of which six stations can be stored. To update station list press and hold AS 1-2 button for more than two seconds.OK great, so I push the button and it comes up with a bunch of stations. They show up as pushbuttons at the bottom of the radio display, just like your favorites do. Only they show up as either AS 1 or AS 2, switched between by pressing the AS 1-2 button again.

Now I have 12(24?) stations I've never heard before, time to see if I like any of them. The first one is automatically selected, so I choose to scroll through them by pushing the handy SRC selector on the steering wheel. The manual again sayeth:


v SRC ^ (Rotary Control): Press v or ^ to select a radio band or audio source.

Press v or ^ to select the next or previous favorite radio station, CD track, DVD track/chapter, or MP3 track.OK first off let's ignore that this description is confusing at best. What it means is if you push IN on the SRC nib, it selects the next band or audio source. If you push UP or DOWN on the SRC nib, it selects the next station, track, etc.

Be that as it may, it means EXACTLY what it says here. If I'm listening to an AS station and I push UP on the SRC nib, guess what happens?

IT SELECTS THE NEXT STATION FROM MY LIST OF FAVORITES, NOT THE NEXT AutoSelect STATION!

Excuse me, *WHAT*? All that effort, and it decides to select the next station from a market I'm over 2,000 miles away from?

So the only way I can find to select the next AS station is to hit the radio button on the touch screen. I generally try to avoid doing things like that, since I prefer to keep both hands on the wheel.

Would it be that hard to have the radio select the next AS station if an AS station is playing and the SRC nib is used to attempt to select the next one?

Perfectly reasonable. I bet the GM programmers read these suggestions and if it has not already been done it will be in a future software release. I understand they have already changed the radio turning on when you select any of the non-radio center panel features like climate.

It seems to be designed as a way to set your FAVs (init your radio settings when your car is new) vs traveling around the country and wanting to find local stations ... I assumed the latter as well.

My impression of this feature is that it locates strong signals and then it seems to want you to save them on a FAV page. When I picked one of the AS-1 or AS-2 stations within a few moment it swapped to my FAV page. You can get to AS-2 by clicking the AS 'button'.

If I were going to use this when I traveled I would go to the CONFIG, RADIO, Number of FAV pages, and add 1. I only use 2 FAV pages now. I would then use AS when I was traveling and just use the touch screen to select/sample the stations. When I found 1+ I liked I would add them to this extra FAV page (recall I said it automatically switches to). When I got home I would then do CONFIG/RADIO and reduce my Number of Fav pages by one.

Again I thought it was a traveling feature but I'm not sure now based on how it actually operates.

FYI, this appears to be fixed on the 2012s, at least the base radio. Pushing up & down on src now moves between autostore radio stations if you are in that mode. Maybe they will provide a patch for the 2011s.