Smart city solutions for people, industry and the environment
For their city-to-city cooperation in the IUC programme, Toyota and Grenoble-Alpes Metropole were interested in developing smart city solutions for a sustainable city through innovation and creation of new businesses. They shared experience in renewable energy such as networking of hydrogen labs and startups, hydrogen fleet deployment, town development using hydrogen energy and clean energy vehicles.
Toyota, known as the “City of Cars”, has a vision to become a world-class smart transportation city. While its city development in the past focused on building the foundation for transportation, such as transportation networks and safety, the new vision for 2040 is to improve the quality of mobility and protect the environment. For more on Toyota’s transport-based city development, download the file below.
Toyota Motor has developed ultra-compact electric vehicles and a car-sharing platform called Ha:mo. This innovative car-sharing experiment was launched in Grenoble, demonstrating the potential of small electric vehicles for urban trips.
Citizen participation in promotion of SDGs and environmental actions
Toyota and Grenoble-Alpes Metropole were keen to improve environmental awareness and promote the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in their cities. Each adopted the SDGs as a universal approach of monitoring, promoting and branding sustainable development and developed their own environmental action plans.
Their cooperation on promotion of SDGs has continued to today, with Grenoble-Alpes Metropole participating in the “Think SDGs 2021” International Conference in Toyota in March 2021.
Support to open innovation
Both cities exchanged information on challenges for open innovation and learned about the strengths and weaknesses of their own initiatives so that they could improve them. This exchange involved the Monozukuri Creative Base SENTAN in Toyota and Y.SPOT in Grenoble-Alpes Metropole.
The Monozukuri Creative Base SENTAN brings together three key facilities: the Toyota Innovation Center; the Next Generation Industry Section, Industry Division, Toyota City; and the Toyota City Monozukuri Support Center. Y.SPOT is an open innovation centre promoting and showcasing collaborative innovation.