Woven City is a bold experiment by Toyota. There is a futuristic city designed and built from the ground up in Japan to test the latest technologies. It's called Woven City, and it's a bold experiment by Toyota to transition from being just an automaker to a broader mobility company focused on the future of movement. Far from a traditional testing ground, this is a fully functional urban environment designed for real people to live, work and play while contributing to groundbreaking research. Think of Woven City as a real-world laboratory.

Ryan Owen holds an MBA from the University of South Carolina, and has rich experience in financial services, having worked with Liberty Mutual, Sun Life, and other financial firms. Ryan writes and edits AI industry trends and use-cases for Emerj's editorial and client content. Toyota came to the United States in the late 1950s, setting up its US headquarters in California. A decade later, the Japanese automaker became the third-largest import brand in the United States. In 1968, Toyota introduced the Corolla, now the world's best-selling passenger car.

Everywhere you turn in the transportation industry these days, Toyota Motor Corp. already seems to be there. From batteries and self-driving vehicles to lunar rovers and ride-hailing companies, the world's second-biggest automaker is on an investment spree, pouring more than ¥300 billion into deals and partnerships in recent years. Toyota is placing bets across the board, mimicking technology investors like SoftBank Group Corp. Toyota, Volkswagen and other carmakers face an uncertain future as new technologies and business models ripple through the $2.23 trillion global auto industry. Uber Technologies Inc. has made younger buyers less interested in owning and driving cars, and Tesla Inc.'s success with electric vehicles has spurred bigger rivals to counter with their own products. All told, car sales will be only slightly higher in 2030, while new spending on mobility services will total $1.34 trillion, Accenture predicts.

The race to transform the global auto industry has reached full throttle. Facing what has been touted as a once-in-a-century transformation, domestic carmakers are rushing to transition from conventional manufacturers into tech-driven "mobility companies" focused on CASE (connected, autonomous, shared and electric) technologies. Toyota Motor Corp. on Tuesday unveiled two revamped models -- the Crown and the Corolla Sport -- the first offerings in its lineup of so-called "connected cars" that will be able to utilize online services offered through a special communications network. The networked models, for example, allow their owners to become "friends" with them on Line. The owner can then use the messaging app to set a destination on the car's navigation system, while the car can use it to remind the driver to start on time and make sure there is enough fuel for the trip. Toyota hopes its so-called mobility service platform will allow other companies, including insurers and car-sharing services, to make use of big data to offer other services to drivers of connected cars.

The Toyota e-Palette, an autonomous vehicle designed for multiple business purposes such as driverless stores, is displayed at CES 2018 in Las Vegas. Up until several years ago, car companies were, well, car companies. Except for firms like Honda, Suzuki and BMW who make cars and motorcycles, all other manufacturers focused their attention on building safer, more efficient cars and crossovers. To meet the needs of a rapidly changing society with a hunger for cleaner, more efficient, more connected transport systems, firms like Toyota and Honda are making strategic diversions from their recent paths. At last January's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Toyota announced its e-Palette concept, an autonomous, flexible, electric vehicle concept that can be tailored to various needs and lifestyles.

U.S. Transportation Secy.: Self-driving tech will make roads safer Innovation is underway to rethink one of the biggest headaches we face on a daily basis: getting to work. From crowdsourced shuttle buses to companies offering rides to lure top talent, here are concepts used in some cities that could one day help your morning commute. Some of the largest US companies, including Google, Apple and Facebook, offer shuttles or arranged ride shares to get employees to work. These shuttles often come with free WiFi, and pick up near employees' homes. "It's the dawn of private transportation systems operating under the radar," Ryan Croft, co-founder of TransitScreen, a startup providing real-time transit planning information, told CNN.

Two new announcements from Ford highlight how the auto and mobility company is harnessing technology to get ahead. With ambitious plans to launch an autonomous vehicle in 2021, Ford has announced that it is investing $1 billion over the next five years in Argo AI, an artificial intelligence company founded by former Google and Uber leaders, to develop a virtual driver system. Argo AI founders Bryan Salesky, company CEO, and Peter Rander, COO, -- both of whom have worked on self-driving car teams at Google and Uber -- have brought together a team of some of the most experienced roboticists and engineers in the industry to develop the new system for Ford's SAE level 4 self-driving vehicles. "The next decade will be defined by the automation of the automobile, and autonomous vehicles will have as significant an impact on society as Ford's moving assembly line did 100 years ago," said Ford President and CEO Mark Fields. "As Ford expands to be an auto and a mobility company, we believe that investing in Argo AI will create significant value for our shareholders by strengthening Ford's leadership in bringing self-driving vehicles to market in near term and by creating technology that could be licensed to others in the future."