Ever wonder what it must be like to spend a day hanging out with Marshawn Lynch? Sure, most of the world has seen Beast Mode terrorize defensive lines on Sundays and avoid the media at all costs, but that’s just the athlete side of the ex-NFL running back. What’s he like sans jersey, pads, or cleats?
Well, for this year’s Digital Trends Car of the Year awards, we found out. As a huge car fan, the former Seattle Seahawks enigma showed up to spend a few hours “testing” various autos with us, alongside Tim Walbridge of 503 Motoring. From the moment Lynch set foot inside his first tester — a Volvo XC90 — he shed his notoriously camera-shy persona and let loose. Unlike at the notorious Super Bowl XLIX media session he appeared at solely to avoid getting fined, Beast Mode was surprisingly open and had us cracking up. And maybe wincing a bit — Lynch pulled no punches on the language.
“Oh I wanna try too, bruh,” Lynch exclaimed as Walbridge seemingly rallied the XC90 in a vacant dirt parking lot. “Oh, hell yeah! Oh, you can drift this motherf****r? I like this.”
Between his colorful language, insightful anecdotes (like the many uses for the front seat of a Tesla), and a few spirited dance moves, it’s clear Lynch wasn’t holding back. Who knew cars got people to drop their guard and have fun? Well, Seinfeld seems to have it figured out.
“But see though, you know I gotta crash dummy car, too,” Lynch told us, obviously not referencing his ’86 Honda Civic. “It’s a [Lamborghini] Aventador. That’s a crash dummy, you know, my bucket.”
As it turns out, the random ramblings of the man behind the wheel shed a lot of light on the man beneath the football helmet. Just a kid from Oakland who got a crack at big league football, Marshawn Lynch — like all of us — is still a kid at heart who’s just trying to have a little fun.
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.