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GM's top battery executive for the Volt to join California startup

General Motors's top executive in charge of developing batteries for the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid is leaving to take a position with an unnamed startup battery company in California. Denise Gray, 46, global director of rechargeable energy storage systems, will step down March 5 after more than three years in the post. This was “an opportunity that I could just not resist,” Gray said in a phone interview.

Home of NAIAS to be updated

The spiritual home of the NAIAS is set to be rejuvenated. The Cobo center in Detroit, home of the North American International Auto Show for over 24 years, is part of a $221 million project that will see it extended and renovated extensively. The Detroit Regional Convention Facility Authority have announced that many of the improvements to the Cobo center will be ready for the 2012 NAIAS, although the project is unlikely to be finished until 2014.

Helicopter crashes while filming driverless Audi

A helicopter crashed near the summit of Pike's Peak in Colorado on Friday while filming a test run of Audi's self-guided vehicle. Local media reports say the pilot is in critical condition and that the three passengers are stable. The crew was filming Audi's autonomous TTS as part of a project to ascend Pike's Peak, just west of Colorado Springs, Colo., in order to demonstrate the abilities of advanced driverless and GPS systems.