Toyota’s driverless Woven City, currently under construction at the foot of Mount Fuji, has been described as a ‘living laboratory’ (Picture: Woven by Toyota)
Ambitious plans to build a utopian sustainable city at the foot of an active Japanese volcano are well on their way to completion.
First announced in 2021, Toyota has been hard at work constructing their Woven City just miles away from Mount Fuji on the island of Honshū, with the first of 2,000 anticipated residents now expected to move in before the end of the year.
News of the project’s imminent completion comes not long after photos were shared of progress being made on Saudi Arabia’s behemoth ‘mirror city’ project The Line, though they’re hardly the only megacities currently under construction around the world.
Marketed as a ‘mass human experiment’, Woven City will provide a ‘living laboratory’ for Toyota to test prototypes of their renewable and energy-efficient self-driving vehicles, dubbed ‘E-palettes’.
The car manufacturer expects to gather data from the use of these driverless cars, guided by sensors in lights, buildings and roads across the city.
This will help them better understand patterns in both automotive and pedestrian traffic.
Construction first began on the £7.8 billion futuristic city in 2021 (Picture: Woven by Toyota)
It’s expected the first of an anticipated 2,000 residents will be moving in to their new ‘smart homes’ at the end of 2024 (Picture: Woven by Toyota)
Sensors in lights and buildings will allow Toyota to gather invaluable data on the pattern of both pedestrian and vehicular traffic (Picture: Woven by Toyota)
Woven City is also expected to feature ‘smart homes’ running almost entirely on hydrogen, reducing emissions so that the futuristic habitation, with its whopping price tag of £7.8 billion, will be as sustainable and eco-friendly as possible.
Akio Toyoda, Toyota’s president, has said: ‘Building a complete city from the ground up, even on a small scale like this, is a unique opportunity to develop future technologies, including a digital operating system for the city’s infrastructure.
‘With people, buildings and vehicles all connected and communicating with each other through data and sensors, we will be able to test connected AI technology in both virtual and the physical realms, maximising its potential.’
Many of the buildings will be constructed in the traditional Japanese style using wood (Picture: Woven by Toyota)
The site is just a few miles from Mount Fuji, an active volcano on Japan’s Honshū island (Picture: Woven by Toyota)
In addition to this cutting-edge tech, most of the buildings in the city will be constructed in traditional Japanese style from wood.
More Trending
That said, even these artisanal techniques will be executed by robots specifically programmed to carry out the heavy labour involved.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.