Inside the £8,000,000,000 futuristic city built at the foot of an active volcano

Toyota is building a futuristic high-tech city at the foot of a volcano to test its driverless cars.

Plans to create a utopian robot city at the foot of an active Japanese volcano are well on their way to completion. 

First 2,000 new residents are expected to move into Woven City by the end of the year just miles away from Mount Fuji on the island of Honshū.

It was first announced in 2021, and Toyota has been constructing it ever since to get the ultra-modern city ready for its first inhabitants.

Marketed as a ‘mass human experiment’, Woven City will provide a ‘living laboratory’ for Toyota to test prototypes of their renewable and energy-efficient self-driving vehicles, dubbed ‘E-palettes’.

£8,000,000,000 experiment in Japan

The car manufacturer expects to gather data from the use of these driverless cars, guided by sensors in lights, buildings and roads across the city.

This will help them better understand patterns in both automotive and pedestrian traffic.

Woven City is also expected to feature ‘smart homes’ running almost entirely on hydrogen, reducing emissions so that the futuristic habitation.

With its whopping price tag of £7,800,000,000, the high-tech city will be as sustainable and eco-friendly as possible. 

Akio Toyoda, Toyota’s president, said: ‘Building a complete city from the ground up, even on a small scale like this, is a unique opportunity to develop future technologies, including a digital operating system for the city’s infrastructure.

‘With people, buildings and vehicles all connected and communicating with each other through data and sensors, we will be able to test connected AI technology in both virtual and the physical realms, maximising its potential.’

In addition to this cutting-edge tech, most of the buildings in the city will be constructed in traditional Japanese style from wood.

That said, even these artisanal techniques will be executed by robots specifically programmed to carry out the heavy labour involved.

News of the project’s imminent completion comes not long after photos were shared of progress being made on Saudi Arabia’s behemoth ‘mirror city’ project The Line, though they’re hardly the only megacities currently under construction around the world. 

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