Looks like everyone with a spare car is getting into the Uber game these days. This now includes professional skier and car enthusiast Jon Olsson, who hit the streets of Stockholm, shuttling Uber users around in his street-legal 1,000-horsepower Audi RS6.
No, he’s not trying to make ends meet during the off-season. Olsson is participating in this year’s Gumball 3000 rally event, which kicks off in the Swedish city and ends in Las Vegas. To drum up publicity, Olsson partnered up with the app-based taxi service to take some of the locals for a few wild rides.
Olsson and his high-powered Audi was available to call up on the Uber app for a block of six hours on the 15th of Friday, during which he received 5,700 booking requests. A lucky 11 plus their friends got a chance to have Olsson drive them around town, to a cafe, or wherever Stockholm Uber users normally go.
The car itself it s a DTM-insipred RS6 designed by Koenigsegg’s former chief engineer. Under all the extra racing bodywork is a 4.0-liter V8 mounted with 18-karat gold anodized turbochargers. This blinged-out power plant can churn up 950 horsepower with regular gas, which can jump over 1,000 hp with race fuel.
Naturally, the skier has a custom carbon fiber roof box mounted on the top for his powder-cutting blades.
The notorious rally event will kick off this Sunday, May 24th where the participants will head out on their transcontinental irresponsibility tour through Europe, ending up in Amsterdam, where the first leg ends. Cars then arrive in Reno, Nevada, looping through California, then ending at the illustrious casino mecca on the 30th.
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.