You may think driverless cars or delivery drones are our future, but Phill Davies believes that “no cars” is the way ahead. Sitting in the prosaic Costa Coffee in East Finchley, Davies is convincing me that what sounds like sci-fi today, will be our norm tomorrow.
I am finding it hard to keep up with his talk of linear motors, control technology and hyperloops, but his vision boils down to a way of delivering goods using underground pipe — the Magway, which will , he says, drastically cut the amount of lorries on our roads. He hopes his enthusiasm will captivate those with an eye for a high-impact investment; Magway has already smashed through its first £750,000 crowd-funding target and is likely to double that by the end of January which will accelerate its first roll-out in a commercial project.
Davies, 50, grew up in Manchester, and had a traditional Jewish upbringing. He and his wife, the journalist and broadcaster Samantha Simmonds, are members of Muswell Hill Synagogue and have three children aged 11, nine and six. Davies studied economics at Leeds before travelling for a year and returning to a job at Deloittes to train as a chartered accountant. So far, so normal. But he wanted to run his own business.
“I always worked in technology retail,” says Davies, who, as a budding entrepreneur, ran his own business at university selling inflatables — remember Manchester City’s giant bananas? “The bulk of them were mine!”.
His early career move from a steady, multi-national firm to launch a potentially risky start-up, was a leap both for Davies and his family. “When I told my parents that I was leaving Deloitte to start a tethered balloon business, the only thing that drowned out my mum’s cries down the phone were my grandmother’s louder cries on the other line — ‘if you don’t take that step, you will never know,’” Davies recalls saying.
“If you are planning to create your own start-up, or work in one, do your research and be committed and believe in what you’re doing. I’ve always loved business and from a young age wanted to be an ‘entrepreneur’, even when it wasn’t so trendy.” His zeal continued even after the balloon business came to a dramatic end when it broke loose from its site at Tower Bridge and landed in Peckham.
His “light-bulb moment” for Magway came when “online orders for my kids, purchased from the same website at the same time, arrived on three different days. I thought — there must be another way to do it.”
He and co-founder Rupert Cruise set up the business in 2017. Rupert heads up technology and engineering and he handles the commercial side. It quickly made waves, Magway was named in the Top 100 tech start-ups by the Singapore government’s innovation agency in 2019. South African born Cruise, 47, is a specialist in linear motors — think a normal electric motor that has been unwrapped and laid in a straight line. He developed the first vertical linear motor, and worked on the Virgin Hyperloop One, a system that aims to move people and cargo in small wheel-less pods in a vacuum tube at speeds that could exceed 600 miles per hour.
If that hasn’t got your head rotating, then Magway’s ambitious aims and objectives for the delivery market will.
Pipe technology is well understood and tested with a mature market in utilities and commodity. There are 3,000 contractors in the UK laying, maintaining and installing similar pipes on an industrial scale. Magway will simply be putting something different through the pipes — packages and freight. Davies claims this tunnel system will improve air quality and ease congestion by removing significant volumes of goods and lorries from our roads. “Magway is more reliable, secure, and safer than road transport,” says Davies. “It will have greater predictability and offer reduced operating costs.”
Initially, Magway is looking at dedicated shorter routes for airports and theme parks. Currently, a lorry has a three-to-seven hour turn around with loading, unloading, getting in and out of the airport perimeter, security checks and waiting for slots. Capacity is limited — a 40ft articulated lorry carries approximately 600 totes (plastic crates), whereas Magway can deliver 1,200 totes each minute.
Next, the focus will be longer routes to the outskirts of large cities and for new towns/cities where ground works are already planned. There is potential to utilise some decommissioned pipes such as the former rail mail in London, and extensive disused gas-pipe networks in a number of large cities.
“An Ocado van can take 80 crates,” he explains. “Magway envisage bringing the orders by pipe to consolidation centres close to cities, leaving only a five mile van delivery to the home. We could move 72,000 crates in an hour in each direction, over a 30-mile distance. It’s never been done before on this scale although similar systems are being developed in Switzerland and Germany. It’s a total revamping of the way we live.”
Magway wants a young work force who care about climate change to support them in their initiative and employed more than 20 interns in 2019. “The nature of Magway, its potential beneficial impact on the environment and its novel use of technology, has led to us being inundated with applications,” says Davies. “Young people are less constrained by education and experience. They spend less time focusing on the ‘why’ as opposed to the ‘why not?’”
They’ve engaged their own kids with the infectious excitement around Magway, “Our kids love Magway,” says Davies. “It has been great to observe their reactions to seeing it evolve. It has inspired them to build various contraptions and inventions of their own. Our parents instilled the values of education, hard-work and perseverance as well as the importance of being mensches and we hope to be passing this on to our own kids.”
Davies and Cruise are dreaming big for Magway, “We envision a day when Magway delivery is so commonplace that people don’t blink at the thought of sending or receiving goods through our pipes. We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves but a Nobel prize would be a nice bonus, particularly for our parents who were hoping for doctors.”
I can see how the Magway could cut the need for lorries, but how about that “no cars” claim? Tunnels could well be the new way to transport people fast and safely says Davies. So, London to Manchester, underground in 30 minutes? “The short answer is there is no reason why not in the future.”
