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Buick's redesigned 2021 Envision, a key pillar in the brand's crossover lineup, will offer more safety features, infotainment options and a premium trim package.

The retooled compact crossover will go on sale early next year and will continue to be built in China.

Helen Emsley, executive director of global design for Buick and GMC, said in a statement that the 2021 Envision will be lower and wider, with premium proportions "designed to combine the expressiveness of a car with the practicality of an SUV."

The Envision will be powered by a 2.0-liter, four-cylinder turbo engine and a nine-speed automatic transmission, Buick said. The current Envision comes standard with a 2.5-liter, four-cylinder engine, with a turbo 2.0-liter as an option.

The Envision, introduced in 2016, has become Buick's No. 3 seller behind two other crossovers, the subcompact Encore and the large Enclave.

"The all-new 2021 Envision is part of Buick's strategy to grow i…

MILAN -- Fiat Chrysler Automobiles said it planned to list its robot-making business, giving more detail Monday about the future of Turin-based Comau, which it already planned to spin off.

Comau will be spun off shortly after FCA completes its merger with Peugeot maker PSA and its shares distributed to shareholders of the new group.

The deal to create the world's fourth-largest automaker is expected to be finalized in the first quarter of next year.

FCA said that it had appointed Paolo Carmassi as Comau's new CEO to pursue the listing. For the past four years Carmassi ran scientific equipment maker Malvern Panalytical, a unit of Britain's Spectris, and previously worked for more than 20 years at Honeywell, it said.

It also appointed Alessandro Nasi, a board member of Exor, the holding company of Italy's Agnelli family which controls FCA, as Comau's new chairman.

Exor is set to become the largest single shareholder of the comb…

Electreon Wireless Ltd. is pressing ahead with projects to test its technology that allows electric cars to be charged while driving, potentially demonstrating a way to overcome a key barrier to the mass adoption of the vehicles.

The startup plans to install 600 meters (656 yards) of coils under a 2 kilometer (1.2 mile) stretch of road in Tel Aviv in mid-August, CEO Oren Ezer said in an interview at Electreon’s offices in Beit Yanai, Israel.

The company is now in the final stages of coordinating the engineering work with various groups like the municipality, utility companies and internet providers. Electreon will then test-run an electric-powered bus fit for public transportation on the track, he said.

The following month, the company expects to run a similar trial in Gotland, the Swedish island where it successfully tested a long-haul heavy truck in February, Ezer said. The coronavirus pandemic slowed the project, but it aims to finish deploying 1.6 ki…

Over the weekend, several dealerships on the West Coast and elsewhere were vandalized during protests stemming from the death of George Floyd last week in Minneapolis.

Mercedes-Benz of Oakland, in California, is one of the dealerships that was looted. Photos show broken showroom windows and vehicles that had been smashed and spray-painted with words such as "eat the rich." CBS BayArea reported that the store also had severe smoke damage from fires in the area.

On Saturday, the dealership posted a video on Facebook of its cleanup effort and said, "Our family is rebuilding. We are part of the community. #protectoakland."

Customers of the dealership commented on the post with supportive messages.

"This is so sad," customer Kathy Ryan wrote. "I will be back to support you when you reopen."

Down the street from the Mercedes-Benz dealership is Honda of Oakland. A video from Friday shows a vehicle being stolen and driven through the showroom wind…

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- Lear Corp. is implementing costly safety measures that may hurt productivity at its operations in Mexico after suffering the deadliest known factory-related coronavirus outbreak in the Americas, but the U.S. auto supplier still faces a battle to win back workers' trust.

The northern Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez remains in the throes of the pandemic as it mourns the deaths of numerous factory workers, including 20 from Lear's Rio Bravo plant, which makes trim seat covers for Mercedes-Benz and Ford.

"I don't think you'll find anyone who says they're not scared," Alma Sonia Trevizo, an employee at the Rio Bravo plant, told Reuters while on a break from safety training ahead of its planned June 1 partial restart.

Following one-way arrows along hallways, eating at cafeteria tables with tall dividers, and stamping shoes on a mat soaked in disinfectant are among the new measures being adopted.

"But we have to take the fir…

A free vehicle-sanitizing event at Sellers Auto Group dealerships in southeast Michigan left some first responders and medical personnel in tears.

"They asked how much it was to coat their car, and I told them it was complimentary — it was something we were doing to support them and what they're doing for us," Sellers Buick-GMC General Manager Pat Hogan said.

The three-store dealership group held the event for front-line workers on April 22. Sellers partnered with Legacy Service Solutions to apply an antimicrobial spray that Hogan says can make a vehicle resistant to the virus for up to four months. Legacy of Waterford, Mich., provides sterilization services to businesses.

At the Sellers Buick-GMC event in Farmington Hills, Mich., 66 vehicles were sanitized and coated with the protective spray. Sellers Subaru in Macomb, Mich., sanitized 63 vehicles at its corresponding event.

While Sellers is using the Legacy produc…

Stuffed to its roof racks with baggage, the Range Rover should have been an instant failure when its fat Michelin tires finally rolled onto U.S. soil in March 1987.

Instead, a brilliant launch strategy crafted mostly by former Volkswagen, Fiat and Chrysler executives that focused on image, capability and customer service got the Range Rover off to a strong start and made it into one of the industry's most improbable success stories.

The Range Rover, celebrating its 50th anniversary this month, has inspired a bumper crop of imitators as well as a growing number of legitimate competitors. In doing so, the Range Rover nearly singlehandedly created a segment — the luxury SUV — that has all but replaced the sedan as the preferred mode of transport for athletes, movie stars, government officials and executives.

But back in summer 1986, Charlie Hughes, the ex-Volkswagen marketing executive running Range Rover North America in Lanham, M…

DETROIT — In the second week of production after the coronavirus shutdown, the Detroit 3 aimed to find a balance: Keep factory floors from spreading infection while racing to fulfill orders from dealers desperate for inventory.

All three companies have had confirmed cases of the virus within their plants since they reopened May 18. But because of new guidance from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in most cases, they have been able to disinfect affected areas with much shorter stoppages than anticipated.

With two weeks to see how everything was running again, the automakers had to quickly decide whether to forgo the usual summer shutdowns to make up for some of the two months they were closed. The contractual deadline to notify the UAW of planned changes in their production calendars, such as canceling the summer break, is Monday, June 1.

The automakers initially said they would shut down a plant for 24 hours to clean when a positi…

TOKYO — The new strategy to put Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi back on their feet can be summed up by how the alliance told the listening world.

The plan was laid out last week simultaneously by the three heads of the three carmakers, looped in from three locations in an international webcast conveyed in three languages, English, French and Japanese.

It was an unmistakable departure from the one-man rule of the Carlos Ghosn era, when the chairman called all the shots for all three companies.

Renault Chairman Jean-Dominique Senard, who now succeeds Ghosn as the group's figurehead leader, took pains to convey a more consensual, balanced approach going forward.

The Franco-Japanese auto empire will run its business with each company taking on individual responsibilities, rather than the three being blended together to meet a unified goal.

Senard dismissed speculation about the possibility of a merger and a …

FRANKFURT -- Scores of German business executives were due to return to China on Friday evening, beneficiaries of an accelerated entry procedure offered by Beijing as both countries seek to reignite their economies after months of lockdown.

Under a deal brokered by the German Chamber of Commerce in China, staff from hundreds of German companies with units there can return without undergoing two weeks' quarantine if they can show a certified negative coronavirus test.

Among the executives waiting to board the chartered Lufthansa flight to Tianjin was Karin Warowski, a controller at Volkswagen Group, who was eager to rejoin her husband after months of separation.

"Obviously everyone's pleased that business is restarting - it's already underway," she said, rushing through a near-deserted airport to catch her flight.

"I'm one of the first privileged few who can go back to Tianjin... I'm very pleased to be going back to where my husband is. We've been …

Of all the ambitious projects attempted in the short history of self-driving technology, no company has been more audacious than Zoox.

Since the startup's founding nearly six years ago, its executives have pursued an arduous path that involves developing their own autonomous driving system, creating their own vehicle platform from the ground up and building their own ride- hailing platform all at the same time.

So it seems fitting perhaps that another aggressive company, Amazon — which has sought to do nothing less than dominate American retail — has emerged as a potential suitor as Zoox readies itself for sale.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported Amazon was in "advanced" discussions to purchase Zoox at a significant discount to the $3.2 billion valuation it achieved during a 2018 funding round. A company spokesperson said Zoox would "not comment on rumors or speculation" regarding a potential sale.

Succeedi…