By Daniel Leussink and Maki Shiraki

SUSONO, Japan (Reuters) -Toyota Motor opened the first section of its Woven City testing site near Japan’s Mt. Fuji on Thursday, more than five years after unveiling the project aimed at accelerating real-world trials of next-generation technologies.

The global automotive industry has been shifting rapidly towards electrification, automation and software-driven innovation since then-CEO Akio Toyoda, who is now Toyota’s chairman, announced the project in January 2020.

Companies like Tesla and Alphabet’s Waymo are already conducting autonomous vehicle trials or offering such services in U.S. cities, while China’s Baidu and Uber have joined forces to deploy autonomous vehicles in some international markets.

Toyota’s software-focused technology unit Wove

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