Aston Martin may still be James Bond’s ride, but Jaguar Land Rover will get plenty of screen time in the upcoming 007 film Spectre when it premieres this fall. At the 2015 Frankfurt Motor Show, the British firm unveiled a fleet of cars that will appear in the movie.
The movie cars include several beefed-up Land Rover models and a Jaguar C-X75, which will be featured in a nighttime chase scene through Rome, with Dave Bautista’s villain Hinx at the wheel. Bautista and Naomie Harris, who plays Eve Moneypenny in the Bond series, were on hand at the unveiling.
The C-X75 is Jaguar’s aborted hybrid supercar. It first appeared as a concept at the 2010 Paris Motor Show, sporting a plug-in hybrid powertrain that included two turbine engines. Jaguar partnered with Williams Advanced Engineering (the engineering arm of the Williams Formula One team) to put it into production, switching to a 1.6-liter piston engine before giving up on the C-X75 entirely.
Other vehicles set to appear in Spectre include some modified Land Rover Defenders sporting roof racks, winches, big tires, and other butch off-road accessories. With the Defender officially being put out to pasture, this could be considered a last hurrah of sorts.
Rounding out the fleet is a car you can actually still buy, a Range Rover Sport SVR. The high-performance Land Rover gets some jewelry of its own, including a roof-mounted LED light bar. All of the SUVs will be used in scenes shot in Austria.
All of the vehicles were prepped by Jaguar Land Rover Special Vehicle Operations (SVO), the company’s special projects division. Created last year, SVO handles everything from specialty production models like the Range Rover Sport SVR, to restorations and customization work.
In Spectre, Bond himself will drive an Aston Martin DB10, a model created specifically for the movie. Like its Jaguar C-X75 rival, the DB10 will never be made available to customers, although its styling may influence future Aston production models.
Volkswagen’s newest EVs in China are making its American and European models look unusually conservative.
With Xpeng’s help, VW has introduced 800-volt charging and advanced urban driving assistance. The new VEGA technology package brings its locally developed vehicle platforms and CEA electronic architecture under one umbrella. Bloomberg reports that Volkswagen intends to update VEGA every three months. Western buyers can find pieces of that package, but not the whole thing in a Volkswagen.
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?