Toyota’s Ambitious ‘Woven’ ExperimentToyota’s Ambitious ‘Woven’ Experiment

LAS VEGAS – Toyota calls it Woven City. It’s a bold experimental enterprise unlike anything the company has ever undertaken. Officially, Toyota describes it as a test-course for mobility. It’s literally a new city that Toyota is building to develop advanced software, autonomous vehicles and a whole lot more.

But I think it goes deeper than that. I believe it’s a bold social experiment to grow an innovative, start-up culture in what is essentially an experimental petri dish called Woven City. Call it the seeds of Toyota’s own Silicon Valley.

Akio Toyoda, the chairman of Toyota, publicly presented his idea for Woven City at CES in 2020. He talked about creating a sustainable, modern city in Japan powered by solar panels and hydrogen fuel cells and serviced by autonomous vehicles.

Back then, there was a lot of talk about “smart cities,” and not just by Toyoda. The idea was that we were on the cusp of building new kinds of cities where everything would be digitally interconnected, where people, goods and services would flow seamlessly, and we would end up living in a utopian ideal.

You don’t hear anyone talking much about smart cities anymore. Everyone’s moved on to the next bright shiny objects, like gen AI and quantum computing. But Akio Toyoda has stuck to his dream. He even invested his own money to get the whole thing off the ground. And he is slowly putting the building blocks in place to pull it off.

At CES 2025 here, Akio was back talking about the progress they’re making. Yes, they’re building a new, small city in Japan. But now the whole effort is called Woven By Toyota and it’s morphed into a separate business unit within the giant automaker, with its own CEO, CFO and CTO. It has its own capital investment arm, and even Akio’s son, Daisuke Toyoda, is working there as a senior VP.

Toyota Motor Chairman Toyoda with architect Ingels at CES 2020.

Woven City is being built on the site of a former Toyota factory in the Shizuoka prefecture and in sight of Mount Fuji (pictured, above). When completed, it’s designed to house 2,000 residents. Several Japanese companies have signed up to use Woven City as a development ground for things like air conditioners that provide pollen-free breathing, and innovative vending machines. But it also includes companies that want to develop better experiences at sidewalk cafes, or new types of foods, and innovative educational methods. Toyota says one of the significant developments to come out of the project is a new operating system called Arene OS for its software-defined vehicles. But clearly, Akio’s idea is to have R&D taking place in Woven City from all kinds of industries and businesses, not just automotive ones.

And this is where the idea gets interesting. Akio wants the residents to come from universities and research institutions. He wants entrepreneurs, inventors and startups to locate there. And he wants them from all over the world, not just Japan.

Toyota says Woven City is a living community to develop new mobility that goes beyond cars to include people and infrastructure. Daisuke Toyoda, Akio’s son, says the people who live there will be like test drivers at a test track. I would say Woven City is like a cross-functional proving ground with apartments.

The residents, whom Toyota calls “weavers,” will have expertise in design and manufacturing. They’ll come from many different walks of life. And the idea is to have them interact in their daily lives, whether shopping, dining or even just going out for a stroll. The hope is that all this interaction with creative people from different companies and countries will generate more ideas and innovation.

Japan is an impressive country but it’s not a particularly innovative one. There are no Teslas or Amazons or OpenAIs coming out of Japan. It’s not a land of startups or breakthrough technologies. That’s simply not part of Japanese culture.

Traditional Japanese culture stresses conformity and consensus. It treasures obedience and homogeneity. Maybe you’ve heard the famous Japanese saying, “The nail that sticks out will get hammered back in place.”

I think Woven City is about trying to break through that paradigm. I think Akio’s idea is to throw a bunch of creative types together in a cool place to live and watch the magic happen.

My only critique of the approach is that this is all part of a corporate plan. It’s structured. There are different phases of development, all according to a planned timeline. It’s not at all spontaneous or organic, which is where the best creative ideas flow from.

And yet, my hat’s off to Akio. If it works, Woven City could grow into something significant. If it doesn’t, well, at least he tried. And in the end, that sure beats sitting around doing nothing.