SUSONO, Japan (AP) — Woven City near Mount Fuji is where Japanese automaker Toyota plans to test everyday living with robotics, artificial intelligence and autonomous zero-emissions transportation.
Daisuke Toyoda, an executive in charge of the project from the automaker's founding family, stressed it’s not “a smart city.”
“We’re making a test course for mobility so that’s a little bit different. We’re not a real estate developer,” he said Saturday during a tour of the facility, where the first phase of construction was completed.
The Associated Press was the first foreign media to get a preview of the $10 billion Woven City.
The first phase spans 47,000 square meters (506,000 square feet), roughly the size of about five baseball fields. When completed, it will be 294,000 square meters (3.1 million square feet).
Built on the grounds of a shuttered Toyota Motor Corp. auto plant, it’s meant to be a place where researchers and startups come together to share ideas, according to Toyoda.
Ambitious plans for futuristic cities have sputtered or are unfinished, including one proposed by Google’s parent company Alphabet in Toronto; “Neom” in Saudi Arabia; a project near San Francisco, spearheaded by a former Goldman Sachs trader, and Masdar City next to Abu Dhabi’s airport.
Woven City’s construction began in 2021. All the buildings are connected by underground passageways, where autonomous vehicles will scuttle around collecting garbage and making deliveries.
No one is living there yet. The first residents will total just 100 people.
Called “weavers,” they’re workers at Toyota and partner companies, including instant noodle maker Nissin and Daikin, which manufactures air-conditioners. Coffee maker UCC was serving hot drinks from an autonomous-drive bus, parked in a square surrounded by still-empty apartment complexes.
The city’s name honors Toyota’s beginnings as a maker of automatic textile looms. Sakichi Toyoda, Daisuke Toyoda’s great-great-grandfather, just wanted to make life easier for his mother, who toiled on a manual loom.
There was little talk of using electric vehicles, an area where Toyota has lagged. While Tesla and Byd emerged as big EV players, Toyota has been pushing hydrogen, the energy of choice in Woven City.
Toyota officials acknowledged it doesn’t expect to make money from Woven City, at least not for years.
Keisuke Konishi, auto analyst at Quick Corporate Valuation Research Center, believes Toyota wants to work on robotic rides to rival Google’s Waymo — even if it means building an entire complex.
“Toyota has the money to do all that,” he said.
Yuri Kageyama is on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@yurikageyama
Reports see the apartment complexes and the roads where a mobility will be tested at Toyota’s Woven City during a tour in Susono, Shizuoka prefecture, Saturday, Feb. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Yuri Kageyama)
Toyota executives in charge of Woven City, from left to right, Woven by Toyota CFO Kenta Kon, CEO Hajime Kumabe and Head of Woven City Management Daisuke Toyoda speak to reporters about the first phase construction of the project in Susono, Japan Feb. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Yuri Kageyama)
L’ILE LONGUE, France (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron announced Monday that France will increase its nuclear arsenal and for the first time allow the temporary deployment of its nuclear-armed aircraft to allied countries, in a new strategy aimed at strengthening Europe’s independence.
Macron made the announcements during a speech outlining his country's nuclear strategy at a military base at L’Ile Longue in northwestern France that hosts the country’s ballistic missile submarines.
“To be free, one needs to be feared,” Macron said.
Macron said the new posture could “provide for the temporary deployment of elements of our strategic air forces to allied countries," but said there would be no sharing of decision-making with any other nation regarding the use of the nuclear weapons.
Talks about such arrangements have started with Britain, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Sweden and Denmark, Macron said.
Macron’s long-planned speech, scheduled before the most recent outbreak of hostilities in Iran, was aimed at spelling out how French nuclear weapons fit into Europe’s security amid concerns raised on the continent by recurring tensions with U.S. President Donald Trump and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
France also will allow partners to participate in deterrence exercises and allow allies’ non-nuclear forces to participate in France’s nuclear activities, said Macron, who is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces under the French constitution.
European partners welcomed the new strategy of France, which has been the only nuclear power in the European Unio n since Britain’s exit from the bloc in 2020.
In a joint statement, Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the two countries would deepen integration in deterrence starting this year, “including German conventional participation in French nuclear exercises and joint visits to strategic sites.”
In a letter to Dutch lawmakers, Defense Minister Dilan Yesilgöz-Zegerius and Foreign Minister Tom Berendsen said the Netherlands was in strategic talks with France on nuclear deterrence as "a supplement to, and not a replacement for, NATO’s collective defense and nuclear deterrence capabilities."
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on X that “we are arming up together with our friends so that our enemies will never dare to attack us.”
Macron also announced that France will increase its number of nuclear warheads from the current level of below 300, but did not give a figure for the increase. It will be the first time France increases its nuclear arsenal since at least 1992.
“I have decided to increase the numbers of warheads of our arsenal,” Macron said. “My responsibility is to ensure that our deterrence maintains — and will maintain in the future — its assured destructive power."
“If we had to use our arsenal, no state, however powerful, could shield itself from it, and no state, however vast, would recover from it,” Macron said.
European leaders have voiced growing doubts about U.S. commitments to help defend Europe under the so-called nuclear umbrella, a policy long intended to ensure that allies — particularly NATO members — would be protected by American nuclear forces in the event of a threat.
Macron said that recent changes in U.S. defense strategy amid the emergence of new threats have demonstrated a refocusing of American priorities and have encouraged Europe to take more direct responsibility for its own security. He said Europeans should take their destiny more firmly into their hands.
Some European nations have already taken up an offer Macron made last year to discuss France’s nuclear deterrence and even associate European partners in nuclear exercises.
Last month, Merz said he’d had “initial talks” with Macron on the issue and had publicly theorized about German Air Force planes possibly being used to carry French nuclear bombs. But Macron ruled out any such possibility in Monday's speech.
France and Britain also adopted a joint declaration in July that allows both nations' nuclear forces, while independent, to be “coordinated.” The U.K., no longer an EU member but a NATO ally, is the only other country in Western Europe with a nuclear deterrent.
Macron has consistently insisted any decision to use France’s nuclear weapons would remain only in the hands of the French president.
Macron added that the evolution of France competitors’ defenses, the emergence of regional powers, the possibility of coordination among adversaries, and the risks linked to proliferation led him to the conclusion that it was essential for France to enhance its nuclear arsenal.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017, said Macron’s plan could cost billions of euros (dollars), jeopardize France's international commitments and lead Russia to interpret it as a “major provocation” that could risk escalation.
“This represents a significant step backward in light of France’s obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,” said Jean-Marie Collin, the head of the group’s French office. “Increasing its arsenal reflects a dynamic of participation in an arms race, contradicting the spirit, if not the letter, of this treaty, which commits nuclear-armed states to pursue nuclear disarmament.”
“On a strategic level, Russia would very likely consider this initiative as a major provocation, with risks of escalation.
Petrequin reported from Paris. Jamey Keaten in Geneva, Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, and Claudia Ciobanu in Warsaw contributed to this report.
French President Emmanuel Macron delivers a speech next to the submarine 'Le Temeraire' (The Temerarious) at the Nuclear submarines Navy base of Ile Longue in Crozon, France, Monday March 2, 2026. (Yoan Valat/Pool Photo via AP)
French President Emmanuel Macron delivers a speech next to the submarine 'Le Temeraire' (The Temerarious) at the Nuclear submarines Navy base of Ile Longue in Crozon, France, Monday March 2, 2026. (Yoan Valat/Pool Photo via AP)
FILE - France's Rafale B twin-seat multirole fighter performs during the Pegase 2024 mission at Halim Perdanakusuma airport in Jakarta, Indonesia, Wednesday, July 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana, File)
FILE - A Rafale M single seater fighter jet is catapulted on France's flagship Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, Jan. 12, 2016. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena, File)
FILE - French Marine officers wait atop "Le Vigilant" nuclear submarine at L'Ile Longue military base, near Brest, Brittany, July 13, 2007. (AP Photo/Francois Mori, Pool, File)
