01732 759725 magazine 29 MOBILITY are Daikin Industries, which will be testing ‘pollen-free’ spaces and the opportunities for ‘personalised functional environments’; DyDo DRINCO, which will be exploring new vending machine concepts; ENEOS Corporation; Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT); Nissin Food Products; Rinnai Corporation; UCC Japan Co, which will be assessing futuristic café experiences; and Zoshinkai Holdings, which plans to collect data in support of new learning methods and environments. This summer, Toyota is planning to invite startups, entrepreneurs, universities and research institutions to take part in Woven City with the launch of an accelerator programme and fully funded ‘scholarships’. Above all, Woven City will serve as a testbed for Toyota’s transformation into a mobility company, working with WbyT to redefine mobility and expand its scope beyond transportation to encompass the movement of people, goods, information and energy across land, sea and air – and even into space, following WbyT’s investment in Interstellar Technologies and plans to leverage Toyota’s expertise in the mass production of rockets. https://woven.toyota/en/ AI will clearly have a big role to play, powering a Digital Twin replicating Woven City’s real-world environment and, with Vision AI, analysing video data to understand the movement of people and objects around Woven City. Phase One and Two Toyota unveiled the Woven City concept, developed with Woven by Toyota (WbyT), an independent company created to support the project, at CES 2020, before breaking ground on the site of its former Higashi-Fuji plant in Shizuoka, Japan in February 2021. In October, it completed construction of Woven City’s Phase 1 buildings, earning a LEED for Communities platinum certification in recognition of the project’s environmental performance and human-centric design. Now, in preparation for Phase Two, it is creating a Woven City manufacturing hub for ‘Inventors’, including Toyota, which will be using Woven City as a testbed for its Arene vehicle operating system, WbyT and other Toyota Group companies, as well as third-party businesses looking to advance mobility and develop new technologies that have the potential to shape a better tomorrow. Some of those already involved The city of the future or a testbed for the future of mobility is currently taking shape at the base of Mount Fuji in Japan. Called Woven City, the 175-acre site powered by hydrogen fuel cells could soon be teeming with driverless cars, flying cars, robot pets and personal security drones as Toyota Motor Corporation and other ‘Inventors’ test and validate the future of mobility in an open-air laboratory that will eventually be home to 2,000 full-time residents. At CES 2025, Toyota announced that it had completed the initial phase of construction of Toyota Woven City and would be launching Phase 1 of its experiment this autumn, with the first 100 residents – mainly Toyota and Woven by Toyota staff and their families – moving into the futuristic city designed by Danish architect Bjarjk Ingels. As more external inventors and their families join in the experiment, the population of ‘Weavers’ is expected to increase to 360 by the end of Phase 1. With members of the general public being invited to become Weavers from as early as next year, the community is expected to grow to 2,000 members. In his update at CES 2025, Akio Toyoda, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Toyota Motor Corporation, said: “Woven City is more than just a place to live, work and play. Woven City is a place where people can invent and develop all kinds of new products and ideas. It’s a living laboratory where the residents are willing participants, giving inventors the opportunity to freely test their ideas in a secure, real-life setting. A place where we can welcome people and partners from around the world to join us in our quest to imagine and improve how all of us live in the future.” In addition to robotics and autonomous driving and logistics, Flying cars, robotic pets and guardian drones on the cards for Toyota’s Woven City as first residents prepare to move in City of the future takes shape
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