Woven City: Toyota’s Futuristic Testbed for Autonomous Vehicles and AI Technologies Revealed

A portion of Toyota Motor Corporation’s Woven City, a futuristic city built close to Mount Fuji in Japan, has been revealed. In essence, Woven City is a “network city.”

Citing the Yomiuri Shimbun and Nikkei, Toyota held a completion ceremony for the first phase of Woven City in Susono City, Shizuoka Prefecture, the day before.

At the ceremony, Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda expressed his vision: “We anticipate this site to be the birthplace of future mobility innovations. Woven City will be a constantly evolving environment.”

Promoted by the Toyota subsidiary Woven by Toyota, Woven City will be built on the site of a former Toyota factory. It will have a total area of about 710,000 square meters, equal to 15 Tokyo Domes, which will be used as concert halls and baseball stadiums.

The initial phase covers 47,000 square meters and includes 14 structures comprising residential buildings and community hubs.

The buildings are connected by underground passageways approximately 400 meters long and have a total floor area of roughly 25,000 square meters.

Automated delivery robots travel through the subterranean passageways to deliver packages and parcels to every home.

Cameras are attached to the above-ground road signals to measure the number of people and cars moving, and the signal replacement cycle is adjusted based on the results.

In addition to mobile sales using autonomous electric vehicles, autonomous buses will operate on the plaza’s roads.

After this fall, about 100 Toyota officials and their families are expected to relocate to Woven City, where 2,000 people, including members of the general public, will eventually reside.

The Yomiuri reported that researchers and entrepreneurs live in Woven City, where they develop autonomous driving and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that can be integrated into everyday life. It added that energy company Eneos and telecommunications company NTT will also collaborate in this endeavor.

The Nikkei explained that Toyota’s strategy integrates autonomous driving with infrastructure and transportation, describing it as a testing ground to gauge Toyota’s competitiveness in the era of autonomous driving.