At the Consumer Electronics Show in 2020, Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda pledged to build a city of the future, a place where researchers, engineers, and scientists could live and work together. It was framed as the start of a transformation for the world's largest car company, moving it toward becoming a fully fledged mobility company.
Six months ago, after Toyota spent an estimated $10 billion to build an urban paradise atop a disused factory, the first residents moved in. One-hundred handpicked "Weavers," residents chosen to boost the tech cred of the sensor-laden mini-metropolis, began settling in.
Last week, I got a chance to check it out. Here's what I learned while wandering the streets of Toyota's vision of the future.