As one of the world’s biggest and most successful carmakers, Toyota is renowned for its best-selling models like the Prius. But the company also has ambitious plans to shape the future of mobility and it has built a city to prove it. At CES 2025 Toyota Motor Corporation announced the completion of Phase 1 construction of Toyota Woven City.
Toyota’s future city concept serves as a testbed for urban mobility technologies.
Set to be a testbed for mobility, the development is ready to welcome its first residents by Fall 2025. When it first announced its intention to transform into a mobility company in 2018, Toyota unveiled its future city concept.
For the past several years, the company has poured billions into the development, shaping its Woven City to challenge the current state of mobility through human-centric innovation and empowering mobility transformation.
At CES 2025, CEO Akio Toyoda expressed that the world’s first ‘city of the future’ will be more than just smart, high-tech residences. The US$10 billion utopia will also act as a hub for innovators and start-ups to develop future technologies.
Here’s What You Need To Know About Toyota Woven City:
Following the completion of Phase 1, Woven City is ready to welcome its first residents.
The development is located at the former site of Toyota Motor East Japan’s Higahisi-Fuji Plant in Susono City, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. Since its ground-breaking ceremony in early 2021, Toyota has focused time and investment in completing construction of Phase 1 buildings.
As it is an environmentally conscious and human-centric development, the city has already earned Japan’s first LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) platinum certification. The city will also act as a blueprint for Toyota’s mobility test course, which will focus on the movement of people, goods, information, and energy, weaving a future of enhanced safety, connectivity and well-being for all.
Toyota reveals that Phase 1 is projected to accommodate around 360 residents, with the total population, including Phase 2 and subsequent phases, expected to reach approximately 2,000. Initially, visitors will be limited to related parties, with plans to welcome the general public to participate in co-creation activities starting in FY2026 or thereafter.
However, beyond its intent of enhancing the overall quality of life for its residents and acting as a model for future cities to follow, Toyota Woven City will also boast economic as well as technology development properties.
A City For Inventors
The development will also boast economic as well as technology development properties.
Alongside Phase 1 preparations, renovation of a former TMEJ Higashi-Fuji Plant facility into a manufacturing hub for Woven City is also underway. The city will be a test course for “inventors” to develop, test, and validate innovative products and services.
Toyota opines that Woven City will offer a unique environment equipped with the tools and services needed to tackle societal challenges and create future-focused value. By leveraging the company’s decades-long manufacturing expertise and Woven by Toyota’s (WbyT) software capabilities, the city will provide a conducive environment to drive innovation and shape a better tomorrow.
Amongst the first phase of inventors that will put that theory to the test are personnel from Toyota and Toyota Group companies, such as WbyT. However, the development has also attracted the interest of external companies, startups, and individual entrepreneurs.
Companies such as Daikin Industries, Nissin and UCC Japan are some of the big names set to plant their roots in Woven City. The development is also in continued discussions with previously announced companies such as ENEOS Corporation, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT), and Rinnai Corporation.
External startups, entrepreneurs, universities and research institutions are also scheduled to be invited to Woven City through an accelerator program, starting in summer 2025.
