Toyota Unveils Woven City, A Testbed For Futuristic Mobility

Toyota is building an experimental city near Mount Fuji to test robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and zero-emissions autonomous transportation, The Associated Press (AP) reported.

Once fully developed, Woven City will span 294,000 square meters. I Photo: Toyota

Named Woven City, the project aims to be a large-scale mobility test site rather than a traditional smart city.

"We’re not real estate developers," said Daisuke Toyoda, a Toyota executive from the company’s founding family. "We’re creating a test course for mobility, which is a little different."

AP was the first foreign media outlet to tour the $10 billion project. The first phase, now complete, covers 47,000 square meters (506,000 square feet)—roughly the size of five baseball fields.

Once fully developed, Woven City will span 294,000 square meters (3.1 million square feet). Built on the grounds of a former Toyota Motor Corp. factory, Woven City is designed as a collaborative hub where researchers and startups can test new technologies.

Ambitious plans for futuristic cities have struggled to materialize elsewhere, including Google parent Alphabet’s unfinished Toronto project, Saudi Arabia’s Neom, a development near San Francisco led by a former Goldman Sachs trader, and Masdar City in Abu Dhabi.