Toyota's Woven smart city sounds like a Willy Wonka fever dream

Called Woven City, it is being built on the site of one of Toyota's old factories. Once completed it will not only be home to 2,000 people, but it will serve as a testbed for all manner of smart mobility solutions designed to move not just people and goods, but information and energy, as Toyota puts it.

For Toyota, Woven City represents the physical manifestation of its utopian vision of the future.

The plan was hatched – publicly at least – at CES five years ago by Toyota's then president Akio Toyoda. He returned to the show this year as chairman to announce that phase 1 of construction is complete, and that the first 100 residents will begin moving to Woven City this autumn.

"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," he said. "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."

As for what some of these ideas might look like, well, 'interesting' would be one way to describe them.

For example, chairman Toyoda posited the notion of a high-speed wheelchair, "because everybody should experience the joy of going fast."

He also floated the idea of surveillance drones that accompany people during their night time commute, thereby ensuring their safety, which if nothing else sounds like a dystopian nightmare.

From Orwell to Philip K. Dick now, and it seems like robot pets might one day be furtively sniffing around the fire hydrants of Woven City, as Toyoda suggested they could be developed in order to provide support and companionship to the elderly. Good news for anyone dreaming about electric sheep.

Toyota even plans to use the homes of Woven City as test sites for inventions like robot butlers equipped with AI vision that will enable them to learn by watching and mimicking their human masters.

Woven City might also one day boast its own flying taxi service to Tokyo, courtesy of VTOL maker Joby. Toyota has been a long-standing partner of Joby, and the relationship was reinforced in October when Toyota invested $500 million to help fund the commercialisation of Joby's air taxi service.

On a more sober note, Woven City will also serve as the testbed for Toyota's new vehicle operating system, Arene, which is currently under development. The city will also have its very own digital twin platform.

It won't just be Toyota having all the fun in Woven City, it will also provide a research hub for companies in various sectors.

HVAC maker Daikin is moving in, as is food maker Nissin and drinks maker DyDo Drinco. Coffee manufacturer UCC Japan will also open up shop in Woven City, and so will education services provider Zoshinkai.

Tech start-ups have also been invited to join in as well. Toyota is offering fully-funded 'scholarships' for companies and individuals who are on the lookout for willing guinea pigs.

It is also in talks to host oil company Eneos, boiler maker Rinnai, as well as incumbent telco NTT.

"At its core, Woven City is about collaboration," said Toyoda "It's about the opportunity to weave together diverse points of view, talents and abilities… to create a new kind of fabric for our future."

It's fair to say that Woven City has been flying under the radar since it was first announced. With the disruption that was wrought by the pandemic – and all the supply chain issues and economic uncertainty that followed – you could be forgiven for thinking the idea had been quietly shelved.

But Woven City is very much still alive and kicking, and its absence from the public eye is more likely the result of the way it is structured.

It is administered by Woven Planet Holdings, a subsidiary of Toyota's R&D unit. Established in 2021, Woven Planet manages Woven Core – which is working on various automated driving technologies – and Woven Alpha, which is responsible for building Woven City, and is also developing Arene.

This arms-length structure seems to have enabled Toyota to keep one eye on the future without distracting it from its primary task of manufacturing cars.

Nevertheless, it is a bold and expensive strategy, and the big test will be whether any of the solutions developed in Woven City will find their way into the 'real' world.