Newport Convertible Engineering, which has made a bit of a name for itself thanks to its decades-old passion for chopping off the tops of luxury cars, has followed through with its promise to produce a convertible Tesla Model S.
The California-based company has previously rendered how it would go about giving the four-door all electric sedan a cabrio conversion, but a new video by the company reveals that they’ve gone and actually done it.
This is the first step forward in NCE’s plans to give a multitude of Model S sedans a convertible makeover, as well as trimming a few down to convertible coupes, 600 of each, to be specific. If that seems unlikely, it’s really up to demand. Tesla’s not really a volume carmaker, and thus could not commit a requested 5,000 units exclusively to the engineering shop. Instead, NCE encourages clients to have a Model S on order shipped directly to an NCE location instead of their home.
Clients can have their own drop top Model S for a starting price of $110,000, which will rise to $140,00 if you prefer a hard Tonneau cover. Coupe conversion will only cost a mere $69,000.
From the looks of the Model S in the video, unless going for the full convertible coupe conversion, the car will maintain a rather unfortunate-looking pair of B-pillars and an accompanying strut. While it seems to be a lot of extra cash to dole out, NCE are filling a need for an open-topped EV that it hasn’t satisfied since it stopped producing its roadster. According to NCE, an anonymous Chinese investor has even already secured an order of 100 convertible coupes.
If anyone’s got money to burn and are willing to sacrifice a rollover crush rating so high, it broke the NHTSA’s test machine, they can take their Model S to NCE’s locations in Huntington Beach, CA, Dubai, and Barcelona.
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.