Toyota's futuristic "Woven City" built on the site of a former car factory in Japan is about to welcome its first residents. At this week's Consumer Electronics Show, the Japanese auto giant gave the public an update on the $10 billion project, which it says will become a "living laboratory" where people can live while testing future projects. Toyota said the project has completed the "first phase" of construction and is scheduled to be officially launched in 2025.

Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda said at today's CES press conference: "WovenCity is not only a place to live, work and play, but also a place where people can invent and develop a variety of new products and new ideas."

Toyota announced WovenCity for the first time at CES 2021. At the time, the company said it would be a "prototype for the city of the future" where it could test autonomous vehicles, innovative street designs, smart home technology, robotics and new mobility products on real people who would live there full-time.

Now, move-in day is quickly approaching. Toyota said it will welcome WovenCity's first 100 residents in the fall of 2025, and they will all be employees of Toyota or its subsidiary WovenbyToyota. The community will gradually expand to include "outside inventors and their families," who will be invited to relocate to the new city. Toyota said the city's first phase will eventually house 360 ​​residents.

Toyota calls these first residents "Weavers," adding that they "share a passion for 'expanded mobility' and a commitment to building a more prosperous society." By participating in co-creation activities, Weavers will contribute to realizing WovenCity's full potential".

Still, the first batch of "inventors" identified by Woven City are mostly in the food service industry, including a vending machine company and a startup that hopes to "explore the potential value of coffee through a futuristic cafe experience."

Toyota also mentioned other ideas in its press release, including providing high-power electric wheelchairs for people with disabilities who want to experience the thrill of racing. He also floated ideas such as personal drones that could track joggers to improve safety, and "pet robots" for the elderly.

The "Woven City" is located at the foot of Mount Fuji and includes buildings designed by the famous Danish architect Bjarke Ingels. The goal for the second and subsequent phases is to build enough housing and facilities to house up to 2,000 people year-round, powered by the company's hydrogen fuel cell technology.

The name "Weaving City" refers to the weaving together of three different types of streets or pathways, each intended for a specific type of user. One of them is only for faster vehicles. The second street is a mixture of bicycles, scooters and other low-speed personal mobility devices and pedestrians. The third path will be a park-like promenade for pedestrian use only.

It's unclear how Woven City will fit into Toyota's future transportation plans. Toyota is one of the world's largest automakers but has lagged behind when it comes to electric vehicles. The company has a plethora of hybrid vehicles but only one all-electric vehicle in the U.S., the BZ4X, although it did say a three-row SUV is coming soon.

It's nothing new for automakers to use large tracts of land to build proving grounds set in fake cities to test new vehicles. Corporate towns have been around for decades; Elon Musk, for example, is building his own in Texas to house Tesla and SpaceX employees.

But what Toyota proposes is a dramatic evolution of the concept: a real city populated by real people who would live in the automaker's vision of the future. And this is where it can run into problems. Google encountered similar problems with its Sidewalk Labs project in Toronto, where resident opposition to surveillance and data collection led to the project's eventual failure.

Toyota hopes to avoid the same troubles by improving the quality of life for WovenCity residents. The project has received Japan's first "LEED Community Platinum Certification," the system's highest level.