Toyota’s Woven City opens for residents and innovation

Five years ago, Toyota Motor Corporation chairman Akio Toyoda announced that Toyota would be building a living laboratory at the base of Mt Fuji in Japan. 

Woven City would be designed as a compact and sustainable city where the latest ideas and technologies, such as autonomous electric vehicles and reticulated hydrogen providing energy for homes, could be tested in real life.

This month, Toyoda announced that phase one of the Woven City campus was complete, and the first 2000 residents would soon move in.

Toyoda says the company planned to focus on four key areas of research and innovation: the mobility of people, goods, information and energy.

“We think of Woven City as a ‘test course for mobility’ …where we can develop any number of solutions,” Toyoda says.

“From personal mobility devices…like a wheelchair race car…because everybody should experience the joy of going fast!…to drones that safely escort you home at night,” he says.

Woven City will house many people, dubbed “weavers” by Toyoda, including Toyota employees and their families, retirees, scientists, retailers, industry partners, entrepreneurs and visiting academics. Spaces have been built for laboratories and innovative startups to develop, build and test their concepts.

He has invited innovative companies to talk to Toyota about working from Woven City. 

Toyoda also announced a pitch competition for fully funded scholarships to the Woven City for start-ups or individuals who need financial support to bring their ideas to life.

“We believe that by combining Toyota’s strengths with those from different industries… We’ll be able to create new value, products, and services, which we could never achieve alone. We think of it as invention by kakezan……or invention by multiplication,” he says.

Toyoda says Toyota invests in new technologies and innovation because the company “has a responsibility to invest in our collective future…to share what we’ve learned with others…and support new ideas that benefit the planet and its people.”

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