Woven City is Toyota’s ambitious zero-emissions strategy, dedicated to testing future mobility.
On January 7, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2025 in the US, Mr. Akio Toyoda – Chairman of the Board of Directors of Toyota said that the Woven City project has completed phase one and is ready to inaugurate and welcome residents from the fall of 2025.
Woven City is named after Toyota’s starting point as a textile factory more than 100 years ago. The project was first introduced in 2020, also at CES, demonstrating a strategy to lead the future of human mobility, instead of focusing only on cars as it is today. Woven City is considered a “living laboratory”, which will be home to residents and researchers, who can test and develop technologies such as self-driving, robotics, personal mobility, smart homes, and artificial intelligence (AI) in real-world environments.
With sustainability as a top priority, all vehicles here will have low or zero emissions. The project is Japan’s first LEED Platinum green building certification.
The houses will be built from wood, run on hydrogen, and equipped with photovoltaic cells. The transportation system will have pedestrian paths, self-driving car paths, and optional traffic paths. Woven City will have many roads, squares, offices, houses… just like a real city.
Toyota’s chairman said the city focuses on four areas of research and innovation: mobility of people, goods, information and energy, and will be where Toyota will develop various solutions.
Solutions range from personal mobility devices like race cars for wheelchair users, drones that escort someone safely home at night, to interactive robot pets that assist the elderly, and flying cars that make the journey from Woven City to Tokyo quick and traffic-free.
Automation is another focus, including automated logistics and autonomous transportation, such as the e-Palette car concept.
“I used to think that autonomous vehicles were a bit boring, until our team introduced two Toyota race cars that could drift autonomously,” said Toyoda, a former racing driver. When it comes to automation, it also means AI.
Toyoda also mentioned a new operating system for cars called Arene, a Digital Twin platform that recreates real-world environments, and Vision AI that combines video data analysis with artificial intelligence to better understand the movement of people and objects.
By using both physical and digital environments, Toyota hopes to accelerate the testing and development of new technologies at Woven City.
At Woven City, Toyota has converted one of its old factories into a laboratory large enough to accommodate an airplane. The city is home to 2,200 members from more than 60 countries around the world, including Toyota employees and their families, retirees, retailers, visiting scientists, industry partners, entrepreneurs, academics, and their pets.
Toyoda says Woven is not just a place to live and work, but also a place to invent and develop new products and ideas. It is a living laboratory where residents are actively involved, allowing inventors to test their ideas in a safe, hands-on environment.
Woven City is expected to welcome its first residents this fall. The first phase will have a total of 360 residents.
