Toyota Builds “Woven City” to Test Futuristic Mobility
Abigale Giordano
Digital Editor
In 2021, Toyota celebrated and began its ambitious “Woven City” plan. Named to honor Toyota’s beginning in automatic textile looms, Sakichi Toyoda simply wanted to help his mother who toiled on a manual loom. A $10 billion project, Toyota does not want to profit from its eco-friendly research hub. Instead, Toyota plans to foster innovation and future mobility located under the beautiful Mount Fuji.
Four years later, the Toyota Newsroom reports that the construction of buildings for Phase 1 of the project has been completed. The report goes on to detail that alongside Phase 1 preparations, the renovation of a former TMEJ Higashi-Fuji Plant facility into a manufacturing hub for Woven City is underway, and site preparation work for Phase 2 has commenced. Toyota will utilize data from Phase 1 to refine plans for Phase 2 and future phases, continually enhancing the test course’s functionality. Beginning in summer of this year, external startups, entrepreneurs, universities, and research institutions are also scheduled to be invited to Woven City through an accelerator program. The Japan Times reports that the Phase 1 area covers 47,000 square meters and that eight of the fourteen buildings completed last year will be for residential use. Currently, the construction of hydrogen pipelines and other infrastructure is underway. According to The Japan Times, there are three roads on the ground: one for pedestrians and another for automated mobility, where traffic lights will be equipped with various sensors to measure the flow of people and other traffic. The last street, known as logistics streets, were constructed by excavating a layer of lava ten meters underground, and are interconnected underground. The Associated Press was granted a first look at the city and reports autonomous vehicles will utilize these routes to collect garbage and make deliveries.
Toyota is challenging the current definition of mobility by enhancing the movement of people, goods, information, and energy, according to Toyota Woven City. These four aspects are pillars of mobility—each playing a crucial and foundational role in enabling movement and opportunities. The people of the Woven City include the Inventors, composed of Toyota, third-party companies, start-ups, and academia, and the Weavers, who are the residents and visitors of Woven City, driven by a passion for mobility and ready for a hands-on opportunity for a connected future. The first 100 Weavers are set to move-in to Woven City in fall of 2025 or thereafter, according to The Associated Press. Weavers are essential to the development of the city: coming from diverse backgrounds, their unique perspectives will allow them to co-create innovative products and services with the Inventors. Toyota emphasizes that each individual is invited to determine their own level of involvement in the development of these exciting technologies.
Forbes highlights that the Woven City would not be possible if not for Toyota’s numerous advancements to transform itself from a traditional automaker into a modern mobility company supporting an entire ecosystem. In 2018, Toyota unveiled the e-Palette concept, a flexible electric platform that could be utilized for a variety of use cases including automated shuttles and delivery vehicles. Two years later, the Woven City was announced, a concept for a community of the future that leveraged technology for a variety of uses including mobility. Since 2020, Toyota has established a business unit now known as Woven by Toyota (WbyT) which incorporates many of its next-generation mobility efforts, including the 2021 acquisition of Lyft’s Level 5 automated driving unit, a crowd sourced mapping platform, an investment in WeaveGrid for vehicle-to-grid integration and a partnership with May Mobility to test its automated driving system on the e-Palette prototypes.
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