Swyft Cities won the pitch-off and will be fast-tracked into the Battlefield 200 at the TechCrunch Disrupt in October. The runner-up is Beyond Aero.
The company is committed to improving transportation through the use of lightweight, fixed-cable vehicles. The company says that it has a solution that has a lower cost per mile and less carbon emissions.
Swyft sees this as a new form of urban mobility that can solve transportation problems in densely developed areas, including corporate campuses, airports, universities and tourism districts.
The platform is novel in that the vehicles move on a stationary cable, which allows for new connections to be added when needed. Capacity adds to an area, allowing more profitable developments. It reduces the costs of parking. High value can be driven by providing connections within the site.
Beyond Aero is based in Paris/Toulouse, France, and is building long-range aircraft powered by hydrogen-electric propulsion. The first zero emission private aircraft is a 6-9 seat plane that flies 1000 miles in range.
The image is from Swyft Cities.
On the first day of the pitch-off, the judges were Yoon Choi, Mar Hershenson and Gabriel Scheer. Swyft is approaching a growing problem with a novel solution and a competent go-to-market strategy according to the judges.
Some of the people who were behind transportation and real estate programs at the company founded Swyft Cities. They were tasked with investigating new forms of mobility that could help achieve what the startup now calls district-scale transportation, in a way that both reduced car usage and created a better campus environment. Jeral Poskey, founder and CEO of Swyft, was part of a team that reviewed ideas like underground tunnels and shuttles, but found that most infrastructure solutions are built for long distance commute.
As you look to densify things, you have a lot of congestion and difficulty moving around, and this applies to a lot of universities, airports and other places within a one to five mile scale, according to Poskey.
Swyft has set up a R&D center in New Zealand to come up with a minimum viable product and secured its first customer agreement. The startup is working with Remarkables Park, a large office, retail and residential space, to develop a network of gondolas. Poskey said that the first vehicles would be up and running by August of 2024.
The team at Remarkables Park have a small leg that connects a few buildings and a carpark, and the goal is to test it out and prove it.
This model is how Swyft sees itself scaling in other environments. Poskey explained that the Swyft system doesn't have an endpoint like a train or a traditional gondola system, but rather operates on a network that can grow outward from any location. As those connections grow, they will be able to connect to other forms of public transit more easily.
According to Poskey, the gondolas cost less than other public transit alternatives, like expanding roads and building more parking.
Poskey said that this is cheaper than building parking and has a better campus experience.
Poskey says that the private sector can build infrastructure themselves if the cost is $10 million per mile.
This is something that has a huge potential and is sustainable.
The story has been updated with more information.
Thursday May 19, 2022, and it’s the last day of our in-person Mobility event. Tomorrow we take the journey to the mean streets of the world wide web, and you can still join us virtually! — Haje and...We are in the early days of what it’s going to look like when we’re supported by ambient computing tools all the time. Sony and Microsoft have been rivals in gaming for decades, but one positive aspect that has come out of that recently is a renewed focus on accessibility that has seen both companies pushing the bo...Arrival, the U.K.-based commercial electric vehicle company, unveiled the first prototype of its purpose-built electric vehicle for ride-hailing on the TechCrunch Sessions: Mobility stage on Thursd...Sahil Mansuri, a sales guy, doesn’t want his industry to be defined by sales guys. The founder began Bravado in 2017 to see what happens when you bring together sales professionals into an online c...Snapchat is preparing to introduce a new parental control feature dubbed “Family Center,” which will allow parents to see who their teen is friends with on the app as well as who theyy&#...Let’s say we have a Venn diagram with two circles: Pokémon GO players and Amazon Prime members. If you fall in the middle, congrats! Here’s 30 pokéballs. Niantic’s flagship Pokémo...Making purposeful decisions on diversity and inclusion in the workplace goes beyond simply building your team. Cryptocurrency exchange FTX is launching stock trading capabilities for its customers through its U.S. division. The company, helmed by co-founder and billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, said in an anno...Hello and welcome back to the Chain Reaction podcast, where we unpack and explain the latest crypto news, drama and trends, breaking it down block by block for the crypto curious. Although we’...Historically, the relationship between landlords and tenants can be a contentious one. At the same time, the experiences of managing a property, and renting one, are not always smooth. Belong, a st...In its ongoing effort to combat misinformation about breaking news, Twitter is rolling out a crisis misinformation policy to ensure that it doesn’t amplify falsehoods during times of widespre...Let’s explore insurtech activity in both North America and Europe, compare recent results and look ahead to what could be coming. Netflix is expanding its audio descriptions, subtitles and dubbing in dozens of languages, doubling down on an effort that has been both helpful and successful. Shows will now also feature badges s...TikTok is already one of the world’s fastest-growing social media platforms, where it’s even overtaken YouTube on watch time in select markets and sports over 1 billion monthly active u...WhatsApp is continuing its push into the business market with today’s news it’s launching the WhatsApp Cloud API to all businesses worldwide. Introduced into beta testing last November,...Examining the role that technology and startups play in fighting climate change is the raison d’être for TC Sessions: Climate 2022 (featuring the Extreme Tech Challenge 2022 Global Finals), w...
All Rights Reserved © 2024
