Toyota, founded in 1937; Honda, established in 1948; and Nissan, born out of a merger of several companies — comparing all three companies' histories, five years of financial results, production-network restructuring, FY2026/3's sharply divergent results (Toyota becoming the first Japanese company ever to top ¥50 trillion in revenue, Honda falling into an operating loss on EV-related charges, Nissan mid-restructuring and cutting roughly 20,000 jobs), and their race to commercialize solid-state batteries.
August 28, 2026 Sensors & HardwareAn ultrasonic sensor measures a nearby obstacle's distance from the round-trip time of an ultrasonic pulse — the acoustic counterpart to LiDAR. It can see straight through what trips up optical sensors, transparent glass and black objects included, but its effective range tops out at a few meters. We work through bat-echolocation research, sonar's development in the First World War, the Bosch USS Gen 6's measured range, the Murata MA40S4S and MaxBotix modules that are staples of robotics, and the real-world example of Toyota's eight-sensor Intelligent Clearance Sonar — and how each of these changes what performance you actually get.