Typically, when automakers take on ambitious construction projects, it’s something like a huge new battery facility. Five years ago, however, Toyota announced plans to build something more ambitious than a factory or even a new corporate campus — a whole-ass city. Recently, Toyota completed phase one of the place Toyota is calling the Woven City, and the first 100 residents will move in soon.
This is all part of Toyota’s attempt to get people to think of it as more of a mobility company than a car company, and apparently, it needed to build a futuristic city with a focus on tech innovation to do that. Although, it’s not exactly a city-sized city. It’s built on 175 acres at the base of Mount Fuji and will eventually house about 2,000 people, so it’s really more of a small town owned by a company than a private city.
Ultimately, the point of building Toyota’s Woven City is to develop new technologies, and Toyota says it already has five companies ready to go, from DyDo DRINCO, INC., which is “[c]reating new value through innovative vending machine concepts” to UCC Japan Co., Ltd., which is “[e]xploring the potential value of coffee through futuristic cafe experiences.”
“Woven City is more than just a place to live, work, and play,” Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda told Car and Driver. “Woven city is a place where people can invent and develop all kinds of new products and ideas. It’s a living laboratory where the residents are willing participants, giving inventors the opportunity to freely test their ideas in a secure, real-life setting.”
Now, I’m sure Toyota doesn’t have anything nefarious planned. Toyoda did say all the participants would be willing, and the company also said mobility needs to move “beyond transportation to encompass the movement of people, goods, information, and energy for the benefit of individuals and society.”
At the same time, I’ve seen sci-fi movies before. I’ve played video games. A privately owned city where corporations get to test experimental technology on a select group of supposedly willing participants? There’s no way this doesn’t go south. I mean, I’m not saying any of these companies are going to open up a portal to hell, but can we guarantee that they won’t? Do we have a plan for when experiments that give humans telepathic powers go wrong? What happens if one of the AIs becomes self-aware and attempts to destroy the whole city?
Maybe I’m worrying about nothing. Maybe I’ve just been playing too much Cyberpunk lately, but I don’t know. I think I’m going to need some official promises from Toyota before I sign off on this idea. It all just seems too risky.
