“You know that if you build it, they will come,” Toyota chief executive Akio Toyoda said at CES in Las Vegas, calling his latest project his “personal field of dreams.”
The project is a prototype “city of the future” at the base of Mount Fuji. Toyota will call it Woven City, a nod to its start as a loom maker. It is to run on hydrogen fuel cells and serve as a test site for self-driving cars, robotics, smart homes and artificial intelligence. The Guardian put the site at 70 hectares. The Age said 71.
It will sit where a factory is due to close.
About 2,000 people, mostly Toyota employees, are expected to live there at the start, alongside researchers. Construction is due to begin the following year. Toyota did not disclose what the project will cost.
Who is designing it
Toyota has commissioned Bjarke Ingels, the Danish architect whose firm designed the 2 World Trade Centre building in New York and Google’s offices in Silicon Valley and London. “Connected, autonomous, emission-free and shared mobility solutions are bound to unleash a world of opportunities for new forms of urban life,” Ingels said.
Toyota says the city will be “fully sustainable.” Buildings will be mostly wood, to hold down the carbon footprint, and rooftops will carry photovoltaic panels in addition to the hydrogen fuel cells.
Open to outside partners
Other businesses will be free to join in, Toyota said, and it plans to invite scientists and researchers from around the world to use the city as a “real-world incubator.”
Automakers have talked for years about redesigning cities to cut emissions from vehicles and buildings, ease congestion and put internet technology into daily life. The Age judged that Toyota’s plan goes well beyond what rivals have proposed, and that it shows what financial and political resources the company can draw on at home.
Toyoda framed it as a duty. “I believe it is up to all of us, especially corporations like Toyota, to do our part to help make the world a better place,” he said. “Woven City is one small but hopefully significant step towards fulfilling that promise.”
Sources
- Toyota unveils plan to build 'city of the future' near Mount Fuji
- 'Woven City': Toyota prototype city of the future coming to Mt Fuji
