Short-lived Westies pub shuts its doors

Less than a year after opening, Westies Gastropub in the Short North closed.

Westies opened at

685 N. High St. in May, in the space formerly occupied by Branch.

It’s the second Westies to close in recent months, following a Clintonville location in November.

The original Westies in the Brewery District, 940 S. Front St., remains open.

Nissan to expand central Asian footprint

The company currently has three factories in India, Egypt and South Africa. It wants to add facilities in countries including Pakistan and Algeria, Peyman Kargar, chairman of Nissan in Africa, the Middle East and India, said in an interview. Others would come later, he said.

As Nissan is planning to boost production in the region, it’s paring back in the U.K. and Western Europe.

While the region is one of the smallest markets for global car makers, Nissan produced 6 percent of its vehicles globally in India in 2016, according to the mostrecent data compiled by Bloomberg.

Russian tech giant to design Hyundai’s self-driving cars

based on the South Korean automotive giant’s cars.

The first stage of the joint venture between Yandex and Hyundai Mobis Co., the de-facto holding company of the Korean group, will see the two companies working on developing a prototype driverless car, the Russian technology firm said in a statement Tuesday. The deal will also build an autonomous control system to be marketed to rival car manufacturers and car-sharing startups.

Yandex, Russia’s largest search engine that successfully expanded to online taxi and swallowed Uber Technologies Inc. operations in the country, started testing self-driving cars in 2017. Last year, it started the first robotaxi in a standalone Russian city and announced testing in Israel and Las Vegas.