Toyota opens high-tech village in Japan to road test the future

High-selling carmaker Toyota opened its new high-tech village in Japan on Thursday, an experimental venture to check autonomous driving and different futuristic developments.

It’s touted as a real-life setting during which to trial myriad innovations, from flying taxis to robotic pets and drones that escort you house at night time.

Round 360 Toyota workers and others associated to the corporate will quickly transfer in to good houses in its “Woven Metropolis.”

“It is a take a look at course for the longer term, not only a city,” Toyota’s chairman Akio Toyoda informed a gap occasion, based on nationwide broadcaster NHK.

The variety of residents within the cluster of houses constructed on a disused Toyota manufacturing unit on the base of Mount Fuji is ultimately anticipated to develop to 2,000, the agency says.

Toyoda has beforehand referred to as it a “dwelling laboratory the place the residents are keen individuals” and inventors can take a look at concepts in a safe atmosphere.

“Properties within the Woven Metropolis will ultimately function take a look at websites for future expertise, akin to in-home robotics, to help with day by day life,” he mentioned in January.

One instance could possibly be robots that learn to fold shirts, Toyoda mentioned.

The venture, first introduced in 2020, is led by his son, Daisuke Toyoda.

“Very like take a look at drivers for automobiles… our residents would be the ones who use and expertise the brand new services and products our inventors develop.”

The corporate’s e-Palette self-driving buses may even be examined at Woven Metropolis, amongst different autonomous logistics and driving applied sciences.

© 2025 AFP