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SHANGHAI -- Most automakers closed assembly plants in China for the weeklong Lunar New Year holiday but the viral outbreak that has spread across the country, killing 81 people, has prompted many of them to take further steps and precautions to help contain the epidemic.

Ford Motor Co. called back some employees at its truck joint venture, Jiangling Motors Corp., to refit 600 Ford Transit vans into special ambulances for transporting infected patients, according to internet blogs run by Ford’s China unit.

Two state-owned Chinese automakers, SAIC Motor Corp. and Beiqi Foton Motor Co., are also assembling vans to help transfer victims, according to their internet blogs.

The vans will be shipped to central China’s Hubei province and its provincial capital of Wuhan – the epicenter of the viral outbreak.

To contain the new coronavirus, Chinese authorities have banned or limited travel and locked down 17 cities with more than 50 million people.

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DETROIT -- General Motors will start making the Cruise Origin autonomous shuttle shortly after it starts making an all-electric pickup at the Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant late next year.

The company announced the production plan Monday morning as part of its planned $2.2 billion investment in the factory, which had been slated for closure prior to last year’s negotiations with the UAW. 

Cruise, based in San Francisco, showed the Origin for the first time last week. But the company’s first autonomous ride-hailing offerings will use the Chevrolet Bolt-based third-generation autonomous vehicle, which still has a steering wheel and brake pedals.

Cruise Origin production will start in late 2022, AutoForecast Solutions told Automotive News on Friday.

The investment will create more than 2,200 jobs. Today, 900 workers are employed on one shift at the plant. Production of an all-electric pickup will begin in late 2021, GM said. GM will also …

Hyundai released an early peek at its Super Bowl ad, which takes a very Boston-centric look at one of the tech features on the new-generation 2020 Sonata sedan.

The feature is technically known as Remote Smart Parking Assist, but that's before a group of Boston-area celebrities put it though the local accent and shortened it to "Smaht Pahk."

In a spot that will run in the first quarter, Chris Evans, of Marvel Comics movie fame, and former "Saturday Night Live" regular Rachel Dratch watch as John Krasinski, from "The Office," prepares to fit his new Sonata into a tight parking spot. Evans says there's no way the sedan will fit in the space in front of a coffee shop.

Krasinski tells Evans to stop being a "smahty pants" because the Sonata has a new trick. "Look who's got 'smaht pahk,'" Krasinski says, exiting the vehicle. "Just hit the clicker — 'cah pahks' itself." The Sonata then slowly steers itself between two poorly parked cars. Read more

FRANKFURT -- Tesla CEO Elon Musk sought to allay environmental concerns about the automaker's planned factory in Germany, saying the plant would use less water than was estimated originally.

The company had said in planning documents that the factory would need 372 cubic meters of water from the public drinking water network per hour, sparking protests by local residents earlier this month.

"Sounds like we need to clear up a few things! Tesla won't use this much net water on a daily basis. It's possibly a rare peak usage case, but not an everyday event," Musk said on Twitter on Saturday.

The automaker announced plans last November to build its first European car factory in Gruenheide, in the eastern state of Brandenburg in the outskirts of Berlin.

Politicians, unions and industry groups have welcomed the move, saying it will bring jobs to the region, but environmental groups have aired concerns and a Brandenburg water association warned against "e…

Editor's note: This story is part of a special section on the 100th anniversary of Mazda to be published in the Jan. 27 print edition of Automotive News.

Mazda wasn't always Mazda, and the company it was born from didn't always make cars.

The company, which began as Toyo Cork Kogyo Corp., eventually picked the name Mazda as a way of paying homage to Jujiro Matsuda, the second president of Toyo — the pronunciation of his family name was similar.

Additionally, Mazda comes from Ahura Mazda, the god of harmony, intelligence and wisdom in Zoroastrianism.

Follow the company's journey from humble beginnings in Japan to a global producer of automobiles.

1920

Toyo Cork Kogyo Corp., a producer of cork and machine tools, is founded by Shinpachi Kaizuka in Hiroshima, Japan.

1921

Jujiro Matsuda becomes president of Toyo Cork.

1927

The company becomes Toyo Kogyo Co. Ltd.

1929

Prototype 250 cc two-stroke …

TOKYO — Subaru's first full- electric crossover points to a greener future for an all-wheel-drive brand long seen as an electrification laggard.

But executives aren't particularly bullish about the sales prospects of doing that in their biggest market, the United States.

"The U.S. market is really tough," Subaru CEO Tomomi Nakamura said at a technology briefing here last week where he announced big, new targets for electrifying the automaker. "I think that the market for electrified vehicles will take some more time to form in the U.S. Only Tesla's EVs are selling well."

Subaru will attempt to derive at least 40 percent of its global sales from full electrics or hybrid vehicles by 2030, with its entire lineup being electrified in the first half of the 2030s, the company said.

But electrification adds cost, and Americans don't see the value in added fuel economy, Nakamura said.

Subaru provided a glimpse of its direction last week, showing a…

The first Genesis crossover is finally on the way, and the upstart brand is using the new model not just to ignite sales after struggling to build a dealer body with three sedans. It's also leveraging the Super Bowl, celebrity couple John Legend and Chrissy Teigen, a new logo and the Young Luxury slogan to raise its profile with American consumers.

The recruitment of the "spokes- couple" goes beyond enlisting two A-list stars with nearly 40 million followers combined on Instagram. It speaks to the very aesthetic the marque wants to carve out for itself: young at heart, stylish but not snobby, accessible, fun-loving and different from the boomer brands that take themselves too seriously.

"When we think about John and Chrissy, they're approachable, they're fun, they're young luxury," Mark Del Rosso, CEO of Genesis North America, told Automotive News last week. "America and the world can relate to Chrissy and John." Del Rosso himself is part of…

PARIS -- PSA Group said it will repatriate expatriate staff and their families from the Wuhan area in China, which is at the center of an outbreak of coronavirus.

The maker of Peugeot and Citroen cars said that 38 people would be evacuated and that the initiative will be executed in full collaboration with the Chinese authorities and the French general consulate.

The evacuees will remain in quarantine in Changsha before traveling back to their home countries, PSA said on Saturday.

PSA also said it was taking measures with Dongfeng to take care of their joint venture's Chinese employees.

French companies are big investors in Wuhan, which has historical ties with France.

PSA has three factories in Wuhan as part of a partnership with Dongfeng Motor. Renault and French suppliers Valeo and Faurecia have plants in the city.

Last week a Renault spokesman told Automotive News Europe that its Wuhan factory was closed for the Chinese New Year …

Editor's note: This story is part of a special section on the 100th anniversary of Mazda to be published in the Jan. 27 print edition of Automotive News.

In the mid-1960s, Japanese goods such as motorcycles, cameras, watches and consumer electronics were starting to shed their post-World War II era image for shoddy quality. American consumers were finding many Japanese products to be innovative, cleverly designed, attractive, reliable and affordable. But it would take longer for Japanese automobiles to gain traction outside of Japan.

In 1961, Toyota suffered the public embarrassment of having to withdraw its Toyopet brand of cars from the Unites States after the Crown and Tiara sedans failed. Nissan barely had a toehold in the United States, selling a few hundred Datsun-brand pickups and sports cars a year. Tsuneji Matsuda, president of Toyo Kogyo — Mazda's original corporate name — knew his tiny company stood a better chance of competing in global markets if …

Fears surrounding the fast-spreading coronavirus prompted automakers and suppliers last week to restrict business travel in and out of China, where the key auto-industry city of Wuhan was identified as the illness' epicenter.

In an effort to contain the outbreak, which had been blamed for 41 deaths as of late Friday, Jan. 24, Chinese officials have restricted travel for 35 million people — including a complete quarantine of Wuhan, a city of 11 million, 400 miles west of Shanghai.

Separately, auto companies began limiting employee movement in and out of China.

SAIC GM, General Motors' joint venture with SAIC Motor Corp. that builds and markets Cadillac, Buick and Chevrolet cars and light trucks, has a large manufacturing plant in Wuhan that employs just less than 6,000 people.

Jim Cain, spokesman for GM, told Automotive News that the automaker has restricted all business travel to China and has asked employees in the country to follow all nec…