Hern Tan
Image credit: Toyota
You’d trust Toyota to build reliable cars for your daily fuss-free commute. But would you trust them to build an entire town? Toyota seem to think they are up for the task: the automobile giant has revealed plans to build an entire tech town right at Mount Fuji itself.
Recently announced at CES 2020, Toyota’s new “city of the future” is set to power itself sustainably, through solar power and their in-house hydrogen fuel cell technology. Spanning across 175 acres of land right under the iconic Mount Fuji, the township – already dubbed the ‘Woven City’ – will be home to a full-time population of residents.
Autonomous vehicles, smart home technology and artificial intelligence are just a few of the many technologies that Toyota intends to implement and test in the futuristic city, to see how they might far in a real-world environment.
Image credit: Toyota
Meant to filter out the faster moving vehicles from slower-movers like bicycles and pedestrians, three different types of roads and pathways for each type of traffic will be “woven together” (hence the name).
Also included in the plans is Toyota’s latest autonomous vehicle, the e-Palette. Resembling a see-through shipping container, it’s designed to be adaptable for various uses, and can be reconfigured for car-pooling or even repurposed as a mobile office space.
In an attempt to cut back on the carbon footprint, the town’s buildings will be built with wood as its primary construction material and assembled with modern robotic production methods. The sensor-filled, smart homes are capable of monitoring the occupants health in regular intervals to checking up on the condition of the facilities in the residence. .
Image credit: Toyota
While a large portion of the city’s intended 2000 residents will be Toyota’s engineers and their families, the company will be extending an open invitation to academic and commercial partners all over the world. If you are a scientist with a project that may be interesting to the car manufacturer, you might just be in luck then!
Danish architect Bjarke Ingels has been confirmed as the city’s architect. No stranger to large scale projects, he is best known for his work on the Two World Trade Center in New York City and Google’s global headquarters at Mountain View. The wait for the blueprints to come to fruition won’t be long either, as Toyota claims that they expect to start work at the end of 2021.
As the CEO of Toyoda, Akio Toyoda summed it up, “This is my personal Field of Dream.” We’d be inclined to agree.
