- Toyota's £8 Billion Investment: Toyota has announced an £8 billion investment to create Woven City, a futuristic smart city at the base of an active volcano, aiming to redefine urban living through advanced technology and sustainability.
- Integration Challenges: The article explores the complexities of integrating smart technologies into urban environments, addressing issues such as privacy, data security, and the digital divide among residents.
- Sustainability and Innovation: Woven City is designed to be a carbon-neutral ecosystem, powered by hydrogen fuel cells and featuring smart homes built with traditional Japanese techniques and modern robotics.
- Living Laboratory: As a 'living laboratory', Woven City will test autonomous vehicles, AI-driven transport systems, and a digital operating system to manage urban infrastructure, setting new standards for smart city development.
Read more: JP: Toyota's Smart City: £8 Billion Woven City's Futuristic Blueprint
Ambitious plans to build a utopian sustainable city at the foot of an active Japanese volcano are well on their way to completion.
First announced in 2021, Toyota has been hard at work constructing their Woven City just miles away from Mount Fuji on the island of Honshū, with the first of 2,000 anticipated residents now expected to move in before the end of the year.
A city near Tokyo is the first in Japan to test wireless charging for EVs – and the chargers are in front of traffic lights.
Wireless charging for EVs at traffic lights
The pilot is being run in Kashiwa-no-ha Smart City by the Universities of Tokyo and Chiba, along with nine companies, including tire maker Bridgestone and auto parts makers NSK and Denso. (Kashiwa Smart City is named that because it’s a model city for intelligent transport system experiments.)
Read more: The Japanese city Kashiwa-no-ha is piloting EV wireless charging at traffic lights
Optibus’ bus scheduling software and Timetable Optimisation will transform how services are planned and scheduled in the face of bus driver retention obstacles.
Japanese public transportation operator Iwakuni Bus has selected Optibus’ transportation management platform to help optimise its 1.2 million annual passenger trips in the city of Iwakuni in Japan’s Yamaguchi Prefecture.
Read more: JP: Yamaguchi: Iwakuni Bus uses AI platform to tackle driver shortages
Japanese Digital Transformation Minister Kono Taro has highlighted the need for an international framework for dialogue to ensure trust in cross-border data transfers.
A five-day UN conference on internet governance kicked off in the Japanese city of Kyoto on Sunday. Government officials and business people from tech firms are attending the gathering.
Read more: Japan digital minister says intl. framework needed for data free flow with trust