This communication presents a review of the developments carried out towards the electromagnetic modeling, design and practical implementation of the basic building block of a planar antenna for the reception of Ku-band satellite broadcasting services from user terminals on board automotive platforms. The antenna is conceived as a low profile phased array with fully electronic beam steering and polarization tracking capabilities. This phased array is intended to address the market of low cost consumer applications, which imposes stringent structural and performance-to-price ratio requirements. As will be shown next, these demanding requirements are going to drive the design of the array basic building block: the so-called Elementary Radiating Cell (ERC).