News Toyota's Woven City to welcome first residents this year

Toyota has made significant progress in its experimental city, "Woven City." Chairman Akio Toyoda announced at CES 2024 that the first phase is complete, and resident relocation will begin as early as this fall. Woven City, a nod to Toyota's textile manufacturing roots, is a living laboratory for autonomous vehicle technologies and other futuristic concepts.

The initial 100 residents, primarily Toyota and Woven by Toyota employees and their families, are called "weavers." This number will gradually increase to 360 and eventually reach 2,000. Toyoda emphasized that Woven City will serve as a proving ground for various mobility solutions, including innovative personal mobility devices, drone delivery services, robotic companions for older people, and even flying car transportation between the city and Tokyo.

Located at the base of Mount Fuji, Woven City uses "digital twin" technology to provide real-time analysis and predictive modelling of various features. While self-driving technology and mobility solutions are a significant focus of the project, residents can also interact virtually with multiple aspects of the city. According to the chairman, work is also underway to create a virtual avatar of Toyoda that will "live" on campus. [...] The first phase of Woven City covers approximately 50,000 square meters. Construction on phase two, which will cover about 52,000 square meters, has started, and the ground levelling is expected to be completed by the end of this year. Absmeier said that the entire city will eventually cover about 708,000 square meters, though the total number of phases currently remains unknown.

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Last weekend, Toyota unveiled part of its Woven City, a living laboratory in central Japan designed to test cutting-edge transportation technologies. Located in Susono, Shizuoka Prefecture, this experimental urban space features ground-level roads for self-driving vehicles and underground "logistics streets" for automated delivery trials. The first phase, spanning 47,000 square meters, includes residential buildings, an innovation hub, and an energy facility. While eight of the fourteen completed structures are residences, ongoing work includes installing hydrogen pipelines and completing essential infrastructure and interior finishes.

There are three roads on the ground, including one for pedestrians and another for automated mobility, and traffic lights can be equipped with various sensors to measure the flow of people and other traffic. The logistics streets, which were constructed by excavating a layer of lava 10 meters underground, are connected to all the buildings, and experiments with automated delivery robots will be conducted. Woven City will eventually expand to about 700,000 square meters and house some 2,000 people from inside and outside the Toyota group. Some 100 Toyota employees and others are expected to move into the city in the fall of this year.

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