If you start hearing about the Ferrari 814, it’s not an upcoming model, but rather a reference to the number of cars the luxury supercar brand has to recall. While this may seem like a small number, it’s a high-profile portion of a much larger airbag recall fiasco.
According to Automotive News, airbags fitted in the Ferrari 458 Italia were discovered to have been installed at an improper angle. Documents on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website state that the airbags, when deployed, do so in a rotated orientation that could cause injury.
No one has yet been hurt by them, but the automaker is legally required to swap out the driver-side airbags for free, costing them between $200,000 and $1.4 million – Roughly the price of three Ferraris, depending on the model.
The airbags were manufactured by Japanese supplier Takata, which is currently embroiled in a massive recall ordeal arising from the discovery that its airbags tend to act less as pillowy cushions of safety and more like a fragmentation grenades, exploding and sending shrapnel towards passengers. Eight fatalities have been linked to the issue, and 34 million units are reported to be affected.
Luckily, the Ferrari airbags aren’t subject to that particular defect. The carmaker discovered that the airbag modules were improperly glued, and installed at the wrong angle. Dangerous, but no shrapnel involved.
For anyone who is driving a Ferrari 458 Italia, Spider, Speciale or Speciale A, time to get your Maranello monster back to the dealership. Same goes to drivers of the California T, the FF, F12 Berlinetta, and LaFerrari.
Only cars built between December 19th and April 29th are subject to the recall, but anyone unsure might still want to take their quarter-million dollar speed machine in for a look just in case.
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.