A Trilvee vehicle on the road in Malta
Fans of American comedic documentary filmmaker John Wilson may have seen his “How To” guide to finding a parking spot in New York City. The message of Wilson’s comedic odyssey was clear. Buy a car in the city and you condemn yourself to a world of pain, with life reduced to a constant struggle to find places to safely park your vehicle. Over time, it becomes an obsession. I think we’ve all been there. And whether you’re talking about London, Paris or Mumbai, it’s pretty much the same everywhere.
But this is not only a problem for car owners. Huge tracts of land in cities are designated for parking lots. Spaces are reserved for vehicles that can be used to create green spaces or to house new housing. Added to this are the pollution problems caused by millions of vehicles lugging around in low gear. That will be less of a problem if electric vehicles become dominant, but then you have the new challenge of finding places to host all the necessary charging points. So how do you reduce the number of cars on the road while keeping us all moving?
Now cities usually have good public transport and many city dwellers have made a conscious decision not to drive, not least here in the UK where I live. In 2020, an analysis by the DVLA – the UK’s vehicle licensing authority – found car ownership in the city was falling. It wasn’t just London. Cities in Oxford, Brighton, Newcastle and Birmingham had all seen a drop in the number of people owning and driving cars. It’s a trend that has accelerated to some extent as local authorities have issued permits for personal transportation solutions such as scooters and bicycles, while parking fees have risen.
Personal transport
But here’s the thing. There will be times when many of us will need cars. There are journeys where buses, trams, trains or scooters are simply not enough. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we have to own them.
I spoke to two British entrepreneurs who offer different solutions to tame the negative impact of cars on the urban environment.
Michael Mangion is the founder of Trivlee, The company’s solution to the urban transportation problem is an on-demand vehicle service. Customers who need a car use an app to place an order. The vehicle is then driven remotely to the agreed location. The customer then takes control of the car. Once the session is over, the remote driver “teleports” back in and takes the car to the next job.
As Mangion recalls, the inspiration for Trilvee was, at least in part, his wife’s experience when the couple lived in the Scottish city of Dundee. “My wife had to drive 100 miles to work and she did it alone in a 1.6-ton car,” he says.
So the goal of Mangion was to make the use of vehicles more efficient. The company cites figures that suggest the average car goes unused for 11.4 years in a 12-year life cycle. At the same time, many journeys are single-person journeys. Mangion – a software engineer by trade – saw a business opportunity and began working on a system that would reduce the number of vehicles on the road while ensuring that city residents would have access to cars when needed.
Alex Kendall, CEO and co-founder of Away has taken a different approach. Rather than developing a service, his company is developing the hardware and software that could accelerate the advent of driverless self-driving cars and vans. Essentially manufacturer agnostic technology can be applied and a combination of computer vision and AI allows them to safely navigate traffic. Importantly, thanks to machine learning, the system can be trained to drive on roads in a remarkably short time.
The company has been testing on public roads since 2018 and has established commercial partnerships with delivery companies Asda, Ocado and DSP to conduct trials on their fleets. To fund the commercial rollout of the system, Wayve has just raised $200 million in Series B Funding. The goal as an organization is to see its technology used in 100 UK cities.
Green urban spaces
So what are the benefits? Well, safety is important. Once the technology is perfected, autonomous vehicles should no longer make the mistakes that drivers tend to make. But like Mangion, Kendall also sees an opportunity to create greener and more people-friendly cities. “Autonomous vehicles will allow us to reduce the number of vehicles on the road,” he says. For example, autonomy will be a facilitator for hail services.
This is clearly a hot area for the auto industry in general. But is it a space for entrepreneurs? After all, the big names in the car industry are all investing money in autonomous systems. So is it possible for a startup company to gain market share?
Kendall says Wayve’s advantage is its expert research team and groundbreaking AI and camera technology.
But entrepreneurs do face the challenge of scaling their technology. In the near future, Wayve’s delivery service partnerships will allow the company to take its technology to the streets.
Trilvee’s approach was to talk to local authorities who may be interested in introducing a car-on-demand service. Mangion says he has received two LOIs (letters of intent) so far, though the councils involved cannot be named.
The plan is to focus on relatively small cities. Since demand is limited by population, an effective service can be rolled out with fewer vehicles. Mangion emphasizes that the goal is to get past the testing phase quickly. “We don’t want to do another trial. We have to go to the market,’ he says. To date, funding has been secured from angel and friends and family, but he is looking for more investment.
Mangion emphasizes that Trilvee’s vehicles complement other forms of urban transport, such as e-scooters and e-bikes that are available for rent. “We want to communicate with them,” he says. “They are often last mile options. They don’t go out any further. We can get people from the suburbs.
Kendall agrees that a range of solutions are needed in the smart cities of the future. “Cities need to take a broad view of transport. We need everything – walking, cycling, driving, micromobility, private transport. Last mile and first mile solutions.”
All of these provide opportunities for entrepreneurs, but regulatory support from local and state governments is crucial. Kendall green light from the national government will be crucial to the development of the autonomous vehicle market. “Our question to the government is that they will introduce the legislation quickly, as they have promised,” he says.
Change is coming to the way we move around cities and it will take many forms, with electric, autonomous and remote-controlled cars being part of a much larger mix. How fast it comes is another question. Much of the technology is already in place, the speed of rollout will depend not only on engineering, software and investment, but also on the pace of regulatory support.
