Toyota Built This Entire City Around Autonomous Vehicles. Here

It’s hard to argue that Toyota isn’t operating from a position of strength right now. As global electric vehicle sales remain uneven, the Japanese automaker continues to generate robust profits from its broad hybrid lineup and has managed the U.S. tariff challenges more effectively than many of its competitors.

What about what comes next? It’s similarly hard to argue that Toyota is some kind of industry leader on software and autonomous vehicles—both of which are experiencing a boom right now. But being the world’s largest automaker by volume has its perks, and that includes the scale and capital needed to build a whole city devoted to testing next-generation mobility technology.

Welcome back to Critical Materials, our morning roundup of industry and technology news, headed to your inbox soon, too. Make sure to sign up. Also on deck today: Nvidia’s car business is crushing it, and America’s EV charging investments during the Biden years are starting to bear fruit. Let’s dig in. 

30%: Life In Toyota’s Woven City

Almost six years after it was first announced at CES 2020, Toyota’s Woven City is open for business. Or living. Or a mix of both. It’s one of the more bold and interesting experiments from any carmaker, legacy or otherwise: a whole town at the base of Mount Fuji devoted to mobility testing, startup incubation and more in a very realistic setting.

It’s technically private property, closed to the public and not subject to road traffic laws—which helps with the work being done there—but will eventually be home to potentially thousands of residents. Woven City is less than a square mile in size for now, but it’s poised to grow in the future. 

I find this experiment rather fascinating. But so far it’s mostly Japanese media that have been invited to check it out. Luckily, Nikkei Asia’s excellent English edition has us covered: 

The city’s traffic signals are connected to multi-function poles equipped with cameras and sensors that detect vehicles. The city basically prioritizes pedestrians, with pedestrian signals always green. Only when the system detects vehicles approaching will the lights turn red.

Multiple types of future mobility systems—like autonomous multi-purpose vehicles and electric personal three-wheel vehicles—are being driven on its roads. Using a 400-meter-long underground route dedicated to logistics, autonomous logistics robots deliver packages to each household’s mailbox.

Lifelike test courses for AVs are nothing new, but the world’s hardly seen anything this ambitious before. And other high-tech experiments are already being mixed with aspects of daily life:

A Japanese coffee company, UCC Japan, opened a cafe in the city, aiming to examine how coffee contributes to people’s performance and relaxation. It is conducting a proof-of-concept study regarding how many drinks help them focus on work, what kinds of coffee aroma and temperature make people focus, and whether coffee stimulates discussions with recorded footage and other information.

Data are collected through AI-based image analysis of consumer behavior captured by cameras and subjective evaluations of their feelings.

As others have noted, the long-term value proposition of this wild project is deeply unclear. “I honestly don’t know when this will produce results,” Woven City’s executive vice president Daisuke Toyoda, the son of Toyota’s chairman, told Bloomberg recently. “We could see unexpected results or output, or we might not.” But it’s a bold experiment, and one worth keeping an eye on.

60%: Nvidia’s Automotive Business Is Soaring

Nvidia AI Driving

Photo by: nvidia

Chip and AI giant Nvidia, which may be propping up the entire United States economy at the moment, posted better-than-expected third-quarter earnings this week. Revenue is up 62% from a year ago at $57 billion. 

One especially notable trend is how well Nvidia’s automotive business is doing—it’s quickly becoming the go-to company for computing, sensors and more in the AV space. Some highlights:

Third-quarter automotive revenue was $592 million, up 1% from the previous quarter and up 32% from a year ago. 

Introduced the NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Hyperion 10 autonomous vehicle development platform, a reference compute and sensor architecture designed to enable automakers and developers to build safe, scalable level 4 fleets.

Partnered with Uber to scale the world’s largest level 4-ready mobility network starting in 2027, targeting 100,000 vehicles.

Revealed that NVIDIA and U.S. manufacturing and robotics leaders, including Agility Robotics, Amazon Robotics, Belden, Caterpillar, Foxconn, Figure, Lucid Motors, Skild AI, Toyota, TSMC and Wistron, are driving America’s reindustrialization with physical AI.

Unveiled NVIDIA IGX Thor, a powerful, industrial-grade platform built to bring real-time physical AI directly to the edge.

The EV space may be slowing down somewhat, but lately, I’ve become convinced the field as a whole will be lifted by these investments in AV technology. 

90%: What If Biden’s NEVI Plan Actually Worked?

Electrify America station

Photo by: Electrify America

On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump made a frequent punching bag of his predecessor’s efforts to build out a more robust American EV charging network. And then when he was elected, Trump sought to freeze all funding from the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program. That didn’t work when his action got reversed by the courts. 

Now that NEVI money is flowing again, Politico asks: what if the program was a success we’re all just now seeing? 

Beyond the raw number of chargers they wanted to build, Biden’s people had an overriding goal: to take the glitchy, frustrating experience of EV charging and transform it into a smooth operation that could supersize across the nation’s highways. To do that, they sought to establish a common set of rules and requirements that would spur the many actors of the charging world to coordinate so that all drivers — not just Tesla owners — could count on a charging experience that, well, works.

By that goal, NEVI is working. Biden didn’t get to campaign on the success of shiny new chargers at highway exits. But by insisting that EV drivers get the same plug-in and payment experience regardless of where they go, his administration did lay the groundwork for the EV revolution of tomorrow — even if he won’t get credit for it.

It’s a political failure that morphed into a policy success. This curious path holds intriguing lessons for a Democratic Party that just won a series of promising elections and is contemplating how to govern on its next turn in power.

That one’s worth a read in full. 

100%: Would You Live In Woven City?

Woven City

Photo by: Toyota

I just want to know what the rent is like. But where do you think Toyota’s urban mobility experiment will go over time? And would you want to be a part of that?

Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com

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