Toyota built a $10 billion private utopia—what’s going on in there?
Toyota built a $10 billion private utopia—what’s going on in there?
丰田斥资 100 亿美元打造了一座私人乌托邦——里面究竟在发生什么？
At the Consumer Electronics Show in 2020, Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda pledged to build a city of the future, a place where researchers, engineers, and scientists could live and work together. It was framed as the start of a transformation for the world’s largest car company, moving it toward becoming a fully fledged mobility company. 在 2020 年的国际消费类电子产品展览会（CES）上，丰田首席执行官丰田章男承诺将建造一座“未来之城”，一个让研究人员、工程师和科学家能够共同生活和工作的地方。这被视为这家全球最大汽车公司转型的开端，旨在使其向成熟的移动出行公司迈进。
Six months ago, after Toyota spent an estimated $10 billion to build an urban paradise atop a disused factory, the first residents moved in. One-hundred handpicked “Weavers,” residents chosen to boost the tech cred of the sensor-laden mini-metropolis, began settling in. Last week, I got a chance to check it out. Here’s what I learned while wandering the streets of Toyota’s vision of the future. 六个月前，在丰田斥资约 100 亿美元在一座废弃工厂旧址上建成这座城市乐园后，首批居民搬入其中。100 名精挑细选的“编织者”（Weavers）——即为了提升这座布满传感器的微型大都市科技信誉而选出的居民——开始在此定居。上周，我有机会实地探访了这里。以下是我在漫步于丰田的未来愿景之城时所了解到的情况。
The future is safe
未来是安全的
As part of its transformation into a true mobility company, Toyota is aiming to become the world’s safest carmaker. The company says it wants to create a “society with zero accidents”—a tall order given the sheer number of Toyotas currently on the road. 作为向真正的移动出行公司转型的一部分，丰田的目标是成为全球最安全的汽车制造商。该公司表示，希望创造一个“零事故社会”——考虑到目前道路上行驶的丰田汽车数量庞大，这是一个艰巨的目标。
“Statistically, the set of autonomous vehicles out there is nowhere close to the magnitude of vehicles that Toyota has in the world,” John Absmeier, Woven City’s CTO, told me. While companies like Waymo are fielding tens of thousands of vehicles, Toyota’s eventual autonomous fleet will need to operate at a much higher standard, he said. “从统计学角度来看，目前市面上的自动驾驶车辆规模与丰田在全球拥有的汽车数量相比，根本不在一个量级，”Woven City 的首席技术官 John Absmeier 告诉我。他表示，虽然像 Waymo 这样的公司正在部署数万辆汽车，但丰田最终的自动驾驶车队将需要在更高的标准下运行。
To get there, Absmeier said Toyota’s cars will need far more awareness than onboard systems can provide, even with the most advanced lidar, radar, and imaging sensors on the planet. For instance, the only way to spot a kid darting out from behind a truck, he said, is with cameras on every street watching for hazards, paired with warning systems for oncoming traffic. This is part of the age-old promise of vehicle-to-everything communications, and at Woven City, Toyota is trying to put that idea into practice. Absmeier 指出，为了实现这一目标，丰田汽车需要的感知能力远超车载系统所能提供的范畴，即便配备了全球最先进的激光雷达、雷达和成像传感器也是如此。例如，他说，要发现一个从卡车后突然冲出的孩子，唯一的方法就是在每条街道上安装监控危险的摄像头，并配合针对来往车辆的预警系统。这是“车联万物”（V2X）这一古老愿景的一部分，而在 Woven City，丰田正试图将这一理念付诸实践。
The future is a privacy nightmare
未来是一场隐私噩梦
But if the idea of ubiquitous cameras watching everyone gives you pause, you’re not alone—it certainly seemed startling to me. I counted eight separate cameras at a single intersection in Woven City, plus many more mounted on the ceilings of the buildings I toured. Even the small on-site coffee shop had half a dozen hanging overhead. 但是，如果“无处不在的摄像头监视着每个人”这一想法让你感到不安，你并不孤单——这对我来说确实令人震惊。我在 Woven City 的一个十字路口数出了八个独立的摄像头，此外，在我参观的建筑物天花板上还安装了更多。即使是现场的一家小型咖啡店，头顶上也悬挂着六个摄像头。
There are plenty of cameras in urban areas around the world, but I haven’t seen anything approaching this level of density. All of them feed into what Toyota calls the Woven City AI Vision Engine, an agentic system designed to monitor, catalog, and report activity. A demo video showed how these cameras can be used in retail environments to spot shoplifters. While I was told the system doesn’t use facial recognition, it can still track people based on their clothing, following them as they move from one camera to another. 世界各地的城市地区都有很多摄像头，但我从未见过如此高密度的监控。所有这些摄像头都接入了丰田所谓的“Woven City AI 视觉引擎”，这是一个旨在监控、编目和报告活动的代理系统。一段演示视频展示了这些摄像头如何在零售环境中识别扒手。虽然我被告知该系统不使用人脸识别，但它仍然可以根据人们的衣着进行追踪，并在他们从一个摄像头移动到另一个摄像头时持续跟踪。
Kota Oishi, general manager at Woven City, said that Toyota has surveyed people around the world, including Americans and Europeans, about their views on privacy and data. While people in Southeast Asia tended to be fairly relaxed about privacy, Japanese respondents were far more cautious, he said. “Japanese people are more on the European side. They are very concerned about that data,” he said. “They need to be convinced that the data is protected, and they want to know specifically what the data will be used for.” Woven City 总经理 Kota Oishi 表示，丰田已经对全球各地的人们（包括美国人和欧洲人）进行了关于隐私和数据观点的调查。他说，虽然东南亚人对隐私的态度相对宽松，但日本受访者要谨慎得多。“日本人更倾向于欧洲人的立场。他们非常关心数据，”他说，“他们需要确信数据受到保护，并且想明确知道这些数据将被用于何处。”
Protecting that data across so many systems under development at Woven City is a complex challenge. To try to manage it, Toyota created a system called “Data Fabric.” Saipang Chan, an engineer on the project, told me that users can opt into or out of individual services. “We have our own consent management to ensure that all the data being shared or being collected,” he said. “We act under the consent of the data provider.” 在 Woven City 开发的众多系统中保护这些数据是一项复杂的挑战。为了尝试管理它，丰田创建了一个名为“数据结构”（Data Fabric）的系统。该项目的工程师 Saipang Chan 告诉我，用户可以选择加入或退出个别服务。“我们有自己的同意管理机制，以确保所有被共享或收集的数据，”他说，“我们是在数据提供者同意的前提下行事的。”
Chan said that while user data can be exchanged among the various experiments within the Woven City’s walls, it’s not being sold. At least, not yet. “We allow the Weavers to select what they want to share or not. So whether it’s nothing or whether it’s everything is up to the individual,” Absmeier told me. Oishi, the GM, said the vast majority of the Weavers have opted into the roughly 20 experiments currently underway. For example, 98 percent allow a robot with cameras to operate in their homes. But these opt-in numbers come from a highly curated group of participants living in a controlled environment. The real world is a different place. Chan 表示，虽然用户数据可以在 Woven City 内部的各种实验之间交换，但它不会被出售。至少目前还没有。Absmeier 告诉我：“我们允许‘编织者’选择他们想要分享的内容。所以，无论是分享什么都不分享，还是分享一切，都由个人决定。”总经理 Oishi 表示，绝大多数“编织者”都选择了参与目前正在进行的约 20 项实验。例如，98% 的人允许带有摄像头的机器人在他们家中运行。但这些选择加入的数据来自一群生活在受控环境中的、经过严格筛选的参与者。现实世界则完全不同。
The future is one big creators’ hub
未来是一个巨大的创客中心
Daisuke Tanaka, a resident of Woven City, is something like an on-site digital matchmaker for Weavers. It’s not love they’re looking for, though; he connects creators and startups to spark collaborations every second Friday. “Sometimes we’re talking about technologies and products, but sometimes they’re much more casual events,” he said. He cited a next-gen vending machine under development as an example of the sorts of new products coming from this collaboration. “They want to combine the photo-voltaics with the vending machine so it can run anywhere,” he said. Woven City 的居民田中大辅（Daisuke Tanaka）就像是“编织者”们的现场数字红娘。不过，他们寻找的不是爱情；他每隔一个周五就会将创作者和初创公司联系起来，以激发合作。“有时我们讨论的是技术和产品，但有时也只是非常随意的活动，”他说。他以正在开发的一款下一代自动售货机为例，说明了这种合作所带来的新产品。“他们想把光伏发电与自动售货机结合起来，这样它就可以在任何地方运行，”他说。
Expansive coworking spaces dot Woven City, designed to foster spontaneous brainstorming, with plenty of 3D printers scattered throughout for rapid prototyping. The stated goal is to spur creation, innovation, and successful startups. 宽敞的联合办公空间点缀在 Woven City 各处，旨在促进自发的头脑风暴，到处都散布着大量的 3D 打印机，用于快速原型制作。其既定目标是激发创造、创新和成功的初创企业。