The latest season of Top Gear was promising a showdown between the top three supercars on the roads today; the Porsche 918, Ferrari LaFerrari, and the McLaren P1. While its future was in turmoil last month, Motor Trend attempted to give this endeavor a shot on its own, lining up all three cars to make an appearance at the famous Mazda Laguna Seca race track. We talked about this before, but MT has now uploaded video of the cars that showed up duking it out.
If you didn’t catch the story before, the MT team lined up the McLaren P1 and Porsche 918 for the exercise without issue. They had a La Ferrari owner agree to its use, but Ferrari said “no” to its use for hot laps and data acquisition. While that put a little damper on the affairs, it’s still not going to spoil having two hypercars on hand for pro racer Randy Pobst to throttle them on the track.
To start, Pobst sets off in the Porsche 918 and is immediately thrilled by how the 4.6-liter V8 delivers 608 horsepower to the rear wheels as well as the 279 hp sent to the front by the hybrid electric motor. As much as Pobst praises the all-wheel drive of the 918, he’s aware of the P1’s lightness.
When it comes to the McLaren, the P1’s power plant generates a total of 908 horsepower due to a 3.8-liter twin turbo V8 working in tandem with its own electric motor. One of the main differences in this vehicle is that all that power goes straight to the rear wheels. It makes it wilder than the 918, but will its lightness and power be enough to beat the control of the Porsche?
Much to the surprise of many, the Porsche 918 came out on top, with a 01:29.89 lap time. Try as it might, the McLaren can’t set a time faster than the 01:30.71 run it laid down.
It goes to show that though both cars have taken the same approach to power, they’ve done so in radically different ways. The end result in cars that constantly trump each other back in forth in different areas, but still manage to be fairly equal. The battle for hypercar supremacy carries on, but this is one significant notch on Porsche’s belt.
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.