Toyota Completes First Phase Of Experimental Woven City In Japan

Over the years, Toyota has come to CES multiple times to make various announcements about how it plans to transform itself from a traditional automaker into a modern mobility company that supports the entire ecosystem. In 2018, Toyota introduced the e-Palette concept, a flexible electric platform that can be used for a variety of applications, including automated shuttles and delivery vehicles. In 2020, we heard about Woven City, a community concept of the future that uses technology for a variety of purposes, including mobility. At CES 2025, Toyota returned to reveal an update on Woven City.

Since the initial announcement of Woven City, Toyota has created an entire business division, originally called Woven Planet and now known as Woven By Toyota (WbyT), that includes many of its next-generation mobility efforts. This includes the 2021 acquisition of Lyft’s Level 5 automated driving system, Carmera, and its crowdsourced mapping platform, an investment in WeaveGrid to integrate vehicles into the network, and a partnership with May Mobility to test its automated driving system on e-Palette prototypes. .

Woven City is one of the most ambitious of these projects, creating an entirely new community that also serves as a business and technology incubator. The first phase of Woven City, located at the former Toyota Motor East Japan (“TMEJ”) Higashi-Fuji plant in Susono City, southeast of Mount Fuji, was completed in October 2024. Later this year, approximately 100 Toyota and WbyT employees and their families will begin moving in with the five original partner companies. The first phase will ultimately house around 360 people, with the later phases housing only around 2,000 people. Residents and visitors of the city are known as “weavers”.

The entire “woven” concept revolves around bringing new ideas together into an ecosystem. This is also an allusion to the fact that Toyota was the inventor of the world’s first automatic looms even before the production of automobiles.

Woven City will serve as both a test course for new mobility concepts including small personal vehicles, robotics and other technologies, as well as a business incubator. Future residents will include seniors who will help test ideas that will make their lives better. Among the projects will be robots that can be companions and assistants. Automated vehicles such as the e-Palette for moving people and goods will also be evaluated, as well as electronic VTOLs made by Joby. At the CES press conference, Chairman Akio Toyoda even floated the idea of ​​creating rockets.

This summer, Toyota will launch an idea competition for Woven City. The first group of companies or “inventors” participating in Woven City include:

Clearly, Woven City is about more than just mobility services and testing new types of vehicles. There is a diverse range of participants whose goal is to create a new type of community for the 21st century. As the population ages, especially in Japan, many of these ideas may become important in helping people continue to live independent lives. Toyota plans to provide its manufacturing expertise as well as the software development skills it generates at WbyT to its inventive partners.