WHAT WOULD TOYOTA DO?

BUILDING A CITY WIDE LIVING LAB Toyota is slowly evolving from a traditional car manufacturer into a mobility service platform. To explore this new development they build the Woven City, a prototype smart city and living laboratory, designed to test and develop future technologies like autonomy, robotics, and sustainable energy in a real-world environment.

 In this prototype city citizens (so-called weavers) and innovators come together to co-create, test and bring to life products and services that address everyday societal challenges around the movement of people, goods, information and energy. The project features a unique mesh-shaped street network for different types of vehicles and pedestrians, utilizes hydrogen power for its ecosystem, and integrates traditional and advanced building techniques.

MOBILITY AS A SOCIETAL SYSTEM Toyota approaches the future not as a car manufacturer, but as a designer of mobility systems for society. Its focus has shifted from optimizing vehicles to shaping how people, goods, energy, and information will move in 2050 and beyond. Driven by deep forces such as urbanization, aging populations, climate pressure, and the energy transition, Toyota treats trends as structural changes rather than market preferences. The guiding principle remains consistent with its heritage: build reliable, affordable solutions that serve society at scale.

WOVEN CITY AS A LIVING TREND LAB Toyota’s most distinctive move is Woven City: the permanent living laboratory at the base of Mount Fuji. Rather than studying trends through reports, Toyota embeds them in real life. Residents, engineers, startups, and researchers (“weavers”) co-create and test new mobility, energy, robotics, and autonomous systems in a purpose-built urban environment powered by hydrogen. By observing what people actually do -what they adapt, misuse, or ignore - Toyota captures insights no simulation or consumer survey could reveal.

SYSTEMS-LEVEL FORESIGHT, NOT HYPE In Woven City, trends are stress-tested through daily life. Toyota studies second- and third-order effects, interdependencies between mobility, health, energy, data, and aging, and how innovations mature, stall, or fail over time. This allows Toyota to distinguish lasting shifts from short-lived hype and to track adoption across generations. By turning trend research into urban-scale experimentation with partners across food, energy, and lifestyle, Toyota practices systems-level foresight, designing the future of mobility from the ground up rather than reacting to signals after the fact.

Ask yourself:

• What would be a more abstract level of your product or service?

• What would be an even more abstract level of your product or service?

• How or where could you create a living lab to experiment with this broader perspective?