Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda on Mobility, Sustainable Cities, and Rockets

It's all about infrastructure.

January 16, 2025

Roberto Baldwin

At CES in 2020, Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda announced that Toyota would build a city at the base of Mt Fuji. The giant laboratory would be where the automaker would test out new mobility platforms, energy systems, and try to figure out autonomy within an infrastructure. At CES 2025, the automaker announced that the first phase of the Woven City project had been completed.

Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda speaks about Phase 2 of the automaker’s Woven City project during CES 2025. (Roberto Baldwin)

After the announcement, Toyoda, along with executives from Toyota and Woven by Toyota (WbyT), sat down to talk about what it means to build a test facility populated by humans, how autonomy requires thinking about the environment in which these vehicles operate and, of course, rockets.

"I didn't have any answer to what kind of mobility company that Toyota should transform into. And that declaration, it was more like calling on to the members of our company to think about that," Akio Toyoda told a small group of journalists during a roundtable after Toyota's announcement at CES.

Woven City wasn't born out of a rigid plan to organize the evolution of Toyota as an automaker and as a mobility company. Instead, it was a call to action for everyone involved to figure out what Toyota mobility entails. The project allows Toyota to constantly learn what happens when a community is built from the ground up to be both sustainable and, in some instances, autonomous.

"Chairman (Toyotda) did mention that this project started out without us knowing the correct answer in what we're trying to achieve,” WbyT CEO Hajime Kumabe said. “Now, after five years, if you ask the questions to me, 'Have you found the correct answer to this project,' I say, 'Probably not.'"

A building within Woven City that uses glass as a main feature. (Toyota)

An automaker building something without a plan to monetize what it learns in the short term seems slightly insane in a world where companies are making pricing and roadmap adjustments seemingly on a monthly basis. The executive team stressed that this is a long-term play to help Toyota navigate a quickly changing automotive landscape.

As a mobility company, Toyota is focusing on four factors: the mobility of people, goods, energy, and information. Kumabe also noted that Toyota wants to move people's hearts, an idea that will always be one of the company's main focuses. With phase one complete, the company can see how these factors work together and potentially adjust them not just in future phases but also within phase one.

Toyoda and the other executives stressed that Toyota will bring in not just corporate partners but also researchers and startups into the living experiment. An accelerator will be established this summer. With these partners and the Toyota and WbyT employees living in the city, the automaker is hoping that it can start sharing examples of what is being learned and implemented.

Toyota blasts off

One of Toyota’s more interesting CES announcements this year was about rockets. "We are now doing a lot of research and development preparing for the age of autonomous driving,” Toyoda said. “When we think about autonomous driving, I think that the ultimate goal that we're trying to achieve is to have zero traffic accidents. I think autonomous driving vehicles are going to have a big mission that is with the telecommunication functions and the cars' driving capabilities. Those functions need to protect the lives of people." To that end, Toyota is working with Interstellar and other partners to explore what type of telecommunications network needs to be established to make self-driving safe for everyone.

Woven City from above, with the courtyard at the center. (Toyota)

Autonomous driving is one of the more interesting aspects of the Woven City that's been lost in the shuffle of coverage. Toyota's aim is to bring autonomy to the city as a way to see how these vehicles interact with the entire infrastructure, not just other vehicles. It's an interesting strategy considering the many companies working on self-driving cars that are deploying them onto public roads. Instead, WbyT will work within the confines of Woven City, where every citizen is aware of the testing and can offer feedback.

"We believe that, of course, cars need to change from here,” Toyoda said. “But also we need to understand what the most appropriate infrastructure will be, and we need to understand the most appropriate behavior of people as well. So, taking the vehicle, the infrastructure, and people, this three-prong approach is what we believe is necessary. These three factors will be necessary to create a safe traffic flow.”

Toyoda reiterated that it won't be enough to just focus on the cars. "The ultimate goal we have is to achieve zero traffic accidents in society,” he said.

Toyoda said that someday the automaker may consider creating something similar to Woven City in other parts of the world. For now, though, the company needs to concentrate on developing its current project.