Leave it to Audi to make headlights something interesting to talk about. Not satisfied with their laser light technology, they’re hard at work incorporating that with the matrix-beam system they demonstrated working with LED lighting.
To bring you up to speed, the matrix lighting maps out a grid for the headlight beam area. Instead of shutting off or redirecting the whole beam, the LED tech can simply turn off the light in a section where the light might be blinding. In practical terms, if the car detected an oncoming vehicle, it would still brightly illuminate the dark path in front of the car and just switch off the part of the beam where another vehicle was traveling.
Getting this to work with its laser light tech isn’t a matter of just swapping out the light source. Laser light tends to be more direct and intense, so the solution Audi has been working on revolves around a system called the Intelligent Laser Light For Compact and High-Resolution Adaptive Headlights.
It just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? Mercifully called iLas for short, the system utilizes a rapidly moving micro-mirror that redirects the laser beam. When traveling at low speeds, light is projected in a larger area and narrowed through an aperture when traveling fast on the highway. This gives Audi drivers the best of both worlds: intense, clean beams of light that can illuminate far in front of them, coupled with the fluid dynamics of the LED-matrix system.
No word yet on when any of this tech will be spotted on the front-of-production Audi vehicles, but we’re sure the brand will illuminate us when they’re ready to hit the market.
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.