Toyota consistently nabs the title of the world’s best-selling car company.

But the Japanese automotive behemoth’s car business wasn’t the focus of Chairman Akio Toyoda’s presentation at CES 2025 in Las Vegas. Instead, Toyoda reminded the audience that he’d stood on the same stage five years before and announced plans for Toyota to construct a futuristic prototype city near the base of Mount Fuji in Japan.

Toyoda described “Woven City” as “a living laboratory where the residents are willing participants, giving inventors the opportunity to freely test their ideas in a secure, real-life setting.” And now it’s nearly ready to welcome its first residents.

Starting this fall, about 100 people––mostly Toyota employees and their family members––are slated to move to Woven City. The project’s first phase will include about 360 residents, and eventually could expand to 2,000, per the company. The project’s leaders envision entrepreneurs, startup employees, retirees, academics, and others eventually taking up residence alongside Toyota workers.

They’ll live and work on a site that previously was home to Toyota Motor East Japan’s Higashi-Fuji Plant in Susono City.

There, inventors will develop, test, and validate new mobility solutions for “people, goods, information, and energy,” according to Toyoda.

“We think of Woven City as a test course for mobility, where we can develop any number of solutions,” he said.

Keep reading here.—JG

Figuring out the logistics of charging a single electric vehicle is one thing. What about hundreds?

That’s one of the questions at the heart of a pilot program Ford recently kicked off with Southern Company, an Atlanta-based energy provider whose electric and gas operating companies serve about 9 million customers across seven states.

Southern Company, a longtime customer of Ford’s commercial vehicle division, Ford Pro, has more than 200 electric F-150 Lightning pickup trucks, powered by over 150 chargers, in its fleet. Now, the companies are using Southern’s own fleet to test out managed charging strategies. Goals for the pilot, per a news release, include “optimizing depot charging practices (including electricity use and costs), maximizing vehicle uptime, and minimizing total cost of ownership.”

After six months, Ford and Southern Company will dive into the data and apply the findings to help Southern’s commercial and industrial customers navigate electrification and help the utility provider develop fleet-specific managed charging programs.

“What we’re looking for is, how can we build a blueprint for organizations to successfully navigate the transition to electric vehicles? And then unlock all of the associated benefits with it?” Ananya Gupta, Ford Pro’s senior product manager, told Tech Brew.

Keep reading here.—JG

The EV transition had a bit of a rough year in 2024.

Lower demand prompted many automakers to pull back on investments in electrification. The headwinds facing the sector also slowed M&A activity in the auto industry, as Tech Brew previously reported.

But things may be looking up on that front, according to PwC’s US deals outlook for 2025.

“As we head into 2025, there’s a lot of optimism about increased M&A activity,” Michelle Ritchie, US industrial products deals leader and global deals industrials and services co-leader at PwC, told Tech Brew.

The politics of it all: PwC noted that uncertainty around the election resulted in “an overall reduction in deal volume in North America and Europe” last year. Now that the US presidential election is behind us, business leaders have more certainty about where policy is headed, and may feel more comfortable moving ahead with deals.

The report also pointed to “positive macro trends such as interest rate and inflation reductions” as potential tailwinds in 2025.

PwC expects companies in the automotive industry to rework some of their supply-chain strategies in response to new import tariffs President-elect Donald Trump has said he intends to implement.

“This is likely to prompt more US M&A activity among companies looking to onshore their supply chains and increase their local production footprint,” per the report.

Keep reading here.—JG