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Felicity Ace sinks with thousands of VWs, Porsches, Lamborghinis

The stricken ship Felicity Ace sank overnight after a week of salvage efforts ultimately proved unsuccessful. The ship, which was carrying up to 4,000 VW Group cars, went to the bottom unexpectedly while a salvage team was attempting to tow it to shore, Bloomberg reports.  "Initial reports from the local salvage team state that the vessel had sunk at around 9AM local time having suffered a list to starboard," Mitsui O.S.K. Lines transportation company (MOL), which owns the Felicity Ace, said in a statement released early Tuesday.    "The last vessel position was around 220nm off the Azores," MOL said. "The salvage crafts will remain around the area to monitor the situation. Further information will be provided as it becomes available." The ship sank after being battered by waves and listing 45 degrees to starboard, the ship’s operator said. “The weather was pretty rough out there,” Pat Adamson, a spokesperson for MOL Ship Management (Singapore), a unit of Mitsui OSK Lines Ltd., said by phone. “And then she sank, which was a surprise.” VW, Porsche, Audi, Bentley and Lamborghini-branded models were aboard the ship, which was headed to Rhode Island from GermanyÂ’s Emden port when the fire broke out on Feb. 16.  Rough seas and ongoing fires fueled by the lithium-ion batteries of EVs onboard delayed the ship's salvage and recovery operations for the better part of a week. While the likelihood of salvaging the smoke and potentially fire- and water-damaged vehicles from Felicity Ace's hold was slim to none, some had held out hope that their special-ordered vehicles might survive the mishap.  The Panama-flagged Felicity Ace was safely evacuated of its 22 crew members by the Portuguese navy after a fire started in its hold more than a week ago. The ship can carry up to 4,000 cars. European carmakers declined to discuss how many vehicles and what models were on board, but it appears to have been transporting approximately 2,500 cars, including roughly 1,100 Porsches and an undetermined number of Volkswagens.  The cars aboard were on order. Porsche customers in the United States were being contacted by their dealers, the company said. “We are already working to replace every car affected by this incident and the first new cars will be built soon,” Angus Fitton, vice president of PR at Porsche Cars North America, Inc., told The Associated Press in an email. The ship sank in water nearly 10,000 feet deep, the Portuguese Navy said.

Meet the Bentley Inspirator, your A.I. Bentayga configurator

The future of the car configurator just sprouted a tender new shoot. The Bentley Inspirator app relieves Bentayga buyers of most of the heavy lifting when they're trying to sort out what kind of image they want their super-luxe SUV to project. Usable on any Apple iOS device, the app plays a video and then scans the viewer's face for emotional cues. The video changes based on the viewer's responses to on-screen images, so theoretically, two viewers shouldn't see the same video. The app achieves this by noting 34 "facial landmarks" based on an "emotion data repository" filled with "more than 12 million emotion data points" provided by 3.4 million faces from 75 million countries. At the end of the film, the app suggests a Bentayga configuration, from colors to veneers to wheels. Now fresh from the effort, the prospective customer can apply all of his or her energies to fine tuning the result. You can download it from Bentley's site or the app store, watch the video of how it works above, and check out the press release below. Related Video: BENTLEY INSPIRATOR: PERSONAL PREFERENCE BROUGHT TO LIFE - Inspirator app is the next generation of digital car configurator - Emotion-recognition technology interprets users' facial expressions and generates vehicle configuration - Bentley Inspirator application available to download now at www.bentleymotors.com/inspirator and in Apple App Store (Crewe, 21 October 2015) Personal style preferences can now be transformed into recommendation, with Bentley's latest innovation: the Inspirator. The application monitors the users' facial expressions and reactions and interprets them in order to configure the perfect Bentley for them. Utilising any iOS device's camera function, the application's facial and emotion recognition software measures and analyses the viewer's emotion based on nuanced facial expressions. 34 facial landmarks are identified at 15 frames per second, as the viewer reacts to stimulating film content. The accurate emotion metrics algorithms are built using the world's largest emotion data repository – 3.4 million faces have been analysed in 75 countries amounting to more than 12 billion emotion data points. The viewer's reactions dictate a unique film narrative; the film changes according to what the user responds to most positively, but also deciphers their preferences, creating a unique configuration revealed at the end of the film.

Bentley officially chooses Bentayga name for new SUV

The Bentayga is here and the Bentayga cometh. The former is the Roque Bentayga, a rock formation on the island of Gran Canaria, the second is the arriving Bentley crossover, whose name is inspired by that formation. Yet that's only part of the tale: Bentley says that the taiga, a massive zone of sub-arctic forests that forms a ring around the upper latitudes of the northern hemisphere, played a part in the Betayga's name, too. Oh, and the company's founder – he's got a hand in as well. Company CEO Wolfgang Durheimer says Bentley has taken 4,000 deposits already, and some Bentayga trims will cost more than the Bentley Mulsanne. We do think it right and proper that the Bentley crossover will break the seal on super-luxe SUVs, since it was the Bentley Continental GT – 12 years ago, remember – broke open the market for super-luxe GTs. Still, everything that's gone into the Bentayga name is a lot of responsibility for crossover. We'll find out if its elevated haunches can support the load later this year, when it's revealed in advance of going on sale in 2016. For now, there's video above of it testing in the dunes of the Middle East. The press release below can tell you a bit more. BENTLEY BENTAYGA: THE NEW PINNACLE SUV - Taking luxury to new places, Bentayga is inspired by the natural world - The Bentley Bentayga combines pinnacle luxury and performance (Crewe/Detroit, 12th January 2015) Bentley's all-new and ground-breaking luxury SUV is set to be revealed to the world later this year and a name has been chosen: Bentley Bentayga. This sector-defining SUV will be able to introduce Bentley's renowned modern British luxury to limitless destinations with an impressive combination of on and off road performance. The natural world, along with the company's founder, inspired its name. Crowning the Northern Hemisphere, to the north of Bentley's birthplace in England, is the dramatic beauty of the Taiga, the world's largest transcontinental snowforest. To the south, the rugged peak of the Roque Bentayga in the subtropical Canary Islands draws attention from all directions and a challenging climb rewards with spectacular panoramic views of a rich and diverse landscape.