In rare move, Toyota shutters Japan plant to make way for Woven City

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story included an incorrect opening date for the Higashi Fuji assembly plant. It opened in 1967.

TOKYO — Few undertakings are as symbolic of Toyota's determination to transform itself from an old-school, metal-bending automaker into a next-generation, digitally driven new mobility player.

Next month, Japan's biggest automaker will shutter a 53-year-old assembly plant that makes some of its most niche nameplates. In its place, Toyota will erect a fanciful city of the future.

Toyota Motor Corp. announced the creation of this so-called Woven City in January at CES, with scant details about the living laboratory for towns of tomorrow.

Now, President Akio Toyoda is putting more meat on its bones, talking about mixed mobility grids, underground transportation ducts, a starter population of 360 residents and more.

"We are going to change ourselves from an automobile company into a mobility company," the scion to the founding family said during the company's financial results announcement Friday, Nov. 6.

"In this plan, we are going to utilize this location to develop products that can create profit and value for us in the future," said Toyoda, who is trying to reinvent the company to better compete in an age of upheaval wrought by electrification, connectivity and artificial intelligence.

Autonomous driving, another new technology disrupting the auto industry, will be a key focus of Woven City and is a central reason for building such a city in the first place, Toyoda added.

"It's important to think about autonomous vehicles with the infrastructure as a package," he said. "By having the infrastructure together, the development speed can accelerate significantly."

Woven City will be laid out in 150-meter-by-150-meter grids with three kinds of roads, Toyoda said. One will be dedicated to autonomous vehicles. Another will be only for pedestrians. The third will be for mixed use by pedestrians and their personal mobility devices. Some roadways will be above ground, exposed to the elements, to test mobility technologies in rain, snow, fog and sun. Others, Toyoda suggested, would be below ground, where they can fully leverage the efficiency of zipping around, rain or shine.

About 360 people who initially will populate Woven City will be broken down into three groupings: older people, families and a coterie Toyoda called "inventors."

The inventors will be busy working to develop new technologies, infrastructure setups and ways of living within the modernistic municipality.

But inventing comes with a catch, Toyoda said. Inventors must keep cooking up new ideas. If not, they will be rotated out of the city and replaced by new people who have new inspiration.

About 3,000 individuals and organizations have applied to be part of the project.

Toyoda said he meets with the director of the Woven City program every three weeks to discuss new ideas and directions. The idea is to keep the vision evolving.

Woven City will be built on the site of Toyota's Higashi Fuji assembly plant, in the foothills of Mount Fuji. Higashi Fuji employs about 500 people making some of Toyota's smallest-volume models, including the ultraluxurious Century limousine and hybrid JPN Taxi.

The factory opened in 1967 and now churns out only about 20,000 vehicles.

Production of the Century and JPN Taxi, a bulbous runabout Toyota developed for the domestic market ahead of the derailed 2020 Tokyo Olympics, will be transferred to other factories in Japan. Two other vehicles made at the plant, the Porte and Spade compacts, will be killed.

Some workers will be offered jobs at the other plants, in northern Japan and Toyota City. Toyota said it will work with employees who can't relocate to find other jobs.

Closing an assembly plant in Japan is a rare move for any Japanese automaker, especially Toyota. But this time, Toyota thinks the sacrifice will guarantee survival for years to come.

"It's an ever-evolving city that will never be completed," Toyoda said.

"Creating safe mobility in a town together with the infrastructure, we are going to create the future of mobility."

Toyota will break ground on Woven City on Feb. 23. The day has symbolic meaning because the date's numerals, 2-2-3, can be read as "Fuji-San," the Japanese name for Mount Fuji.