Ford is bringing a couple Boston Dynamics robot dogs to Michigan to prowl around into its Van Dyke Transmission Plant. They’ll be doing more than just creeping out plant workers with their freakishly impressive capabilities, too. ....

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BMW's i subbrand launched the i3, a full-electric city car with an ultralightweight carbon fiber frame, in 2013. BMW showed that it will continue to push the subbrand to new levels when it previewed the iNext, in September. Automotive News Europe Correspondent Christiaan Hetzner spoke with the head of the subbrand, Robert Irlinger, about BMW's electrification strategy.....

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One particularly interesting bit regarded the shooting brake, which Nurnberger said, "we sort of started it and then realized to make a really good shooting brake we had to do a lot more engineering." Thus, the long-roof Vanquish actually has a longer wheelbase than the rest of the cars. According to Nunberger, the rear of the car is taken from a modular platform and is essentially a rear of a Rapide that has been added on. Of course, that required total reengineering, retesting, as well as re-crashing to bring it to production......

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