🏙 Toyota is Building a "City of the Future" on Its Former Factory Site
The new town, Woven City, is located near Mount Fuji on the grounds of the Toyota automobile plant that closed in 2020.
The name alludes to Toyota's origins as the manufacturer of automatic looms before building cars. It also symbolizes the weaving together of new ideas: Woven City will become an incubator for startups and innovations.
AI will oversee buildings and infrastructure, robot companions will help residents with various tasks, and only eco-friendly self-driving vehicles will operate on the streets.
"Our residents will include: Toyota employees and their families, retired people, retailers, visiting scientists, industry partners, entrepreneurs, academics… And, of course, their pets! For example, my favorite horse named Minnie!" says Toyota Motor chairman Akio Toyoda.
His son, Daisuke Toyoda, manages this project. He notes that Woven City is an experimental test course for new mobility technologies. It includes three types of streets: pedestrian, streets where pedestrians and personal mobility coexist, and streets dedicated to automated mobility. Electric Toyota minibuses will become the main city transportation in the city as well e-VTOLs, the flying taxis from the American company Joby Aviation. The city logistics will run underground: all the buildings are connected by underground passageways, where autonomous vehicles will travel around collecting garbage and making deliveries.
The construction of Woven City cost around $10 billion. The Danish design bureau Bjarke Ingels Group was responsible for the architecture.
The city's first residents—100 Toyota employees—will move into it this year. Eventually, its population will grow to 2,000 people. The apartments will not go on sale; the city will open to tourists in 2026.
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