Aston Martin has a storied history of luxury performance vehicles and, with the reveal of the DBX crossover concept to the audience of the 2015 Shanghai Auto Show, Aston took the time to also reveal its vision of its future.
This forward thinking isn’t just based around the exotic ideas packed into the luxury GT concept, either. Dubbed “Second Century,” the plan Aston Martin has expressed is a comprehensive plan to ensure the company is as innovative and relevant in its next 102 years of existence.
While its safe to set a long-term strategy that will extend beyond the lifespan of anyone its presented to, there are plans to change how the world sees Aston Martin in as little as five years.
With former Nissan VP Andy Palmer taking the reigns at Aston, the plan is to not only replace every model in the current lineup, but also add three new ones.
“The Second Century plan not only delivers exciting and highly desirable new luxury sports cars in the traditional sense, but also embraces new powertrain technology,” Palmer said. Specifically, Palmer addresses the fact that an electric version of the Rapide is currently being looked into, something that he feels would be we received in the Chinese market.
What these three new models would be is anyone’s guess, but we can only imagine that there’s a team hard at work fleshing this out as we speak. Aston wants to change everything “by the end of the decade,” and that’s not as far away as we may think it is.
We know that the DBX concept is a vision Aston is keen to push into production, though what a working version of this concept would look like is unknown. The brand has also revived the Lagonda badge to act as its hyper luxury branch, currently pulling duty in the Middle East with the Taraf as its representation. This luxury sedan, limited to 200 models, might be the basis of the second of the three additional cars.
As for the third? Well, we want to say sports car, but then again, we always want to say sports car, so we’ll keep our fingers crossed and see what Aston has up its sleeve. We love sports cars, but we also like being pleasantly surprised just as much.
BYD has launched the third-generation Qin Plus DM-i in China, and the first thing that caught my eye is its price. According to CarNewsChina, the plug-in hybrid sedan starts at 79,900 yuan, which is about $11,980. That’s an incredibly low price for a brand-new car, especially by US standards.
What’s even more impressive is the range. The Qin Plus DM-i can drive up to 137 miles on electricity alone, which should cover most people’s daily commutes without using a drop of gas. Once the battery runs out, the 1.5-liter engine takes over. Thanks to its 17-gallon tank and roughly 91 mpg with a drained battery, the combined range reaches up to 1,423 miles.
Apple won the PC market’s worst quarter, but that’s not the entire story. It won the race by stumbling less than everyone else.
PC makers shipped just 57 million computers worldwide in Q3, which might look good, but it’s a 21% year-over-year plunge (via Counterpoint Research). And despite Apple’s Mac shipments falling by 11%, to 5.6 million, its market share rose from 8.7% to 9.8%. How did that happen?
Update (October 22 23:54 PT): In response to our query, GM clarified that offline recording support is already available on eligible vehicles. Like Tesla's Sentry Mode, it requires owners to connect a USB drive to save incident recordings, which can be viewed on the vehicle's infotainment screen. The upcoming Connected Cameras feature will build on this by giving owners remote access to these recordings via the revamped OnStar app, allowing them to check footage without walking out to their car.
General Motors has announced plans to add a new Connected Cameras feature to its OnStar service starting next year, giving drivers a way to monitor parked vehicles remotely and capture footage of certain incidents.