Progress

Japanese-brand automakers pursue progress with unwavering grit and a collaborative spirit of partnership. They recognize and embrace that progress means playing the long game, where advancing forward can be incremental, and also being ready for revolutionary advancements. Japanese-brand automakers focus on constantly delivering more to its U.S. workers, consumers and communities they serve, which in turn has outsize impacts on the larger U.S. economy, society and automotive industry. The drive to push forward is instilled in everything they do including the use of innovative tools to design future mobility options, advancing the consumer experience, the implementation of new carbon reduction efficiencies across facilities and operations, and their enduring commitment to supporting community partners.

At the heart of this pursuit are the people that power it. Japanese-brand automakers are made up of a multitude of people and teams that build on yesterday’s effort and plan for follow-through on tomorrow’s success. These automakers celebrate and encourage diversity of thought and individual initiative and channel this into outcomes that are good for all. And, progress is not taken for granted. That is why we celebrate and honor their milestones- millions of vehicles produced, consistent support for various causes and community organizations, as well as new initiatives. Japanese-brand automakers continue to use their decades of experience in the United States to strive to find new opportunities to lead, grow and give back.

Honda
Engineers and designers at Honda are pushing the innovation envelope. Through its VR Design Studios in Los Angeles, Honda is leveraging advanced virtual reality and mixed reality technology to develop the next line of innovative Honda vehicles. Virtual reality has become a fundamental tool for Honda in developing EVs and other mobility products. In fact, the 2024 Prologue is Honda’s first model designed largely using this technology, which was also key for enabling design collaboration during the pandemic.
Subaru
Subaru continues to be a model for companies to emulate due to their leadership in environmental stewardship. Their commitment was on display when they announced Subaru, and its retailers have diverted more than eight million pieces of hard-to-recycle trash from landfills across the country through its Subaru Loves the Earth initiative. During Subaru Loves the Earth month in April 2023, and throughout the year, the automaker works with global waste management leader TerraCycle® to offer recycling solutions at over 600 participating Subaru retailer locations nationwide to help transform trash into products that benefit their communities.
Mitsubishi Motors
Mitsubishi Motors introduces a whole new way to test drive by launching the world’s first real time, 3-D virtual experience for potential customers in collaboration with ZeroLight, a cloud-based visualization platform. This new technology allows customers to try out the 2023 Outlander Plug-In Hybrid using a realistic visualization platform to illustrate the experience of driving their ideal vehicle through a lush mountain pass. The experience also provides the option of altering the color, trim, and accessories of the vehicle being tested, which makes for a dynamic and personalized journey for the potential customer.
Toyota
Demonstrating Toyota’s strong commitment to sustainability, the Toyota Logistics Services (TLS) port facility in Long Beach, California is undergoing a transformation into a complex that reduces greenhouse gas emissions, aligned with LEED® standards, to ensure better quality air and health in the community surrounding its facility. As the TLS facility is the largest of Toyota’s three main ports for North America and the Long Beach port complexes have some of the worst air quality nationwide, Toyota strives to improve its impact on the environment as well as the air quality for the communities it serves.
Nissan
Nissan and the Tennessee Department of Transportation recently tested AI driving technology with the CIRCLES Consortium which consists of: Vanderbilt University, UC Berkeley, Temple University and Rutgers University-Camden. The experiment's findings indicated a single AI-equipped vehicle influenced the speed and driving behavior of up to 20 surrounding cars, causing a positive ripple effect to help smooth human-caused traffic congestion.
Honda
Honda recently opened a new state-of-the-art $124 million wind tunnel facility, Honda Automotive Laboratories of Ohio (HALO), located at the Transportation Research Center in East Liberty, Ohio. Coupled with the company's advanced safety research center, the new wind tunnel provides Honda's R&D engineers with two world-class facilities to design and develop the vehicles of the future.
Nissan
Engineers from Nissan North America are partnering with Sierra Space to help design a crewed Lunar Terrain Vehicle to be used in future exploration of the moon. This is an extension of the work Nissan has already done with NASA and will help the company explore the possibilities offered by autonomy and teleoperations, power management systems, vehicle connectivity, and human-machine interface.
Toyota
Toyota Motor North America (Toyota) is collaborating with the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to build, install and evaluate a 1-megawatt (MW) proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell power generation system at NREL’s Flatirons Campus in Arvada, Colorado. This 3-year, $6.5 million collaboration is funded in part by DOE’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and supports DOE’s H2@Scale vision for clean hydrogen across multiple applications and economic sectors.