Toyota, on Tuesday, began its program to develop a fully connected Japanese city and a large laboratory for all future technologies such as robotic driving, robotic technologies and artificial intelligence.
This experimental area, located at the foot of the famous Mount Fuji in central Japan, which it called "the woven city", will allow researchers to test their products in real life with 360 people at the beginning, and then 2000 at a later stage, according to the Japanese auto giant. Innovators and employees will be the testing ground for this program.
Toyota officials held a ceremony to lay the foundation stone on the 175-hectare land on which the city will be built, in the same place as the Toyota plant that closed its doors last year.
"The (Woven City) project officially started today," Toyota President Akio Toyoda said in a statement.
The birth of this smart city is part of the Japanese company´s development strategy of new technologies, as the evolution of rules and consumer tastes continues to push the global auto industry towards greater environmental sensitivity, efficiency and automation.
Toyota unveiled its project for this "living laboratory" in January 2020 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, calling on investors from around the world to cooperate.
Connected city projects are multiplying around the world, especially in North America and China, in cooperation with Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon on the one hand, and the Chinese government on the other hand, along with local giants Huawei, Tencent and "Ali Baba".
These projects benefit from the acceleration of the deployment of the new fifth generation (5G) technology.
