Toyota and Woven by Toyota have marked the first anniversary of Woven City, the company’s purpose-built test site at the foot of Mount Fuji in Shizuoka, Japan. Around 30 proof-of-concept projects are now running there, and seven more companies have signed up as so-called Inventors, taking the total to 31. Construction of Phase 2 has now started, and from 1 October visitors from across Japan will be allowed into Phase 1 for the first time.
Toyota Woven City, developed jointly by Toyota Motor Corporation and Woven by Toyota, Inc. (WbyT), has completed its first year of operation. The site in Shizuoka, Japan, officially launched a year ago and was conceived as what Toyota calls a test course for mobility — a live district where new technology is trialled with people actually living and working in it, rather than on a closed proving ground.
Around 30 projects running at once
According to the anniversary announcement, approximately 30 proof-of-concept trials — POCs, in Woven City’s own shorthand — are currently underway, a number the company says has grown steadily since operations began. Toyota also says the Woven City AI Vision Engine has gained new capabilities over the past year, although the announcement does not detail what those are.
The practical point of the exercise is speed. By putting residents, hardware and software in the same place, Toyota can gather feedback on an idea in weeks rather than waiting for a product cycle — a model closer to a software company’s than a carmaker’s.
Seven new Inventors join the site
Woven City refers to the companies and teams working on site as Inventors. Seven have joined over the past year, bringing the total to 31. Toyota has consistently positioned the project as open to outside partners rather than as an in-house Toyota laboratory, and the growing roster is the clearest evidence so far of how that is going.
Phase 2 starts, and the public gets in
Two milestones land at once. Construction of Phase 2 has begun, extending the built area beyond the first cluster of buildings. And from 1 October, visitors from across Japan will be welcomed into Phase 1 — the first time the site has opened to people from outside the project. Toyota has not said, in this announcement, how visits will be organised or how many people will be admitted.
What it means
Woven City remains an unusual bet in the car industry. Few rivals have built a physical district to test mobility ideas, and its value to Toyota will ultimately be measured by which technologies graduate from it into production cars and services. Opening the gates to Japanese visitors is also a reputational move: a project of this scale is easier to justify when the public can see it.
The context is a company with considerable scale to protect. Toyota Motor Europe reports sales of 1,229,000 vehicles in Europe in 2025 for a 7.2% market share, with around 15.6 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles on European roads, and it is targeting carbon neutrality across its entire European business by 2040.
Phase 1 opens to visitors from across Japan on 1 October 2026.
Source: newsroom.toyota.eu