Maxitube: How it works

Maxitube is a tube transportation system for express delivery of goods. It can transfer beer, steaks, medicine and diapers to your smart fridge almost immediately without couriers, drones or necessity of going to the store by your own.

Maxitube comprises a network of small business representatives (cafes, restaurants, pharmacies and hotels) and larger structures (warehouses, hypermarkets, banks, hospitals). All infrastructural network of a district will have the opportunity to transfer goods between organizations and end users — district’s inhabitants (B2B, B2C, C2C), tourists, kindergartens, schools and so on. Residents can even exchange goods between themselves. For example, granny can send to her grandchildren pastry that she has just baked, without leaving the apartment.

Maxitube is a project that can solve the most crucial logistic issues of modern city. It can remove trucks from the roads of city blocks and decrease traffic intensity by relocating delivery services underground. Then there will be free space for green lawns, alleys, playgrounds and various architectural ideas and projects, so gloomy districts will be transformed into interesting ones, where you can live exciting life in pleasing environment, not disappointing; there will be a place for high tech hospitals, fancy sport clubs and cosy coffee houses.

Where did the idea come from

It was about five years ago. On my way to the airport I run into a traffic jam. While staying I was thinking about the reasons that forced reasonable people to waste so much time on extremely easy routine tasks. Why tonnes, megatonnes of trucks and people should travel through the city for the sake of transferring simple things? Why do we have to spend so much energy to transfer documents (quantity of which is increasing day by day) or flash drive, half a kilo of salami or couple kilos of potatoes? The willing, time and resources for doing this we have lost long time ago.

What we have: a man (100 kg weight for example) is driving a car (2 tonnes weight) and carrying a document (100 grams weight) in round trip through the city. As a result 2100 kilograms are transferring for moving 100 grams, this situation engenders city chaos with half kilo of potatoes, whiskey bottle and couple of papers acting as instigators. This thought is actively evolving while you spend hours in a traffic jam; you think how you should live and what you should do. The world is filled by machines to capacity, we create for them new machines to be sure that all mechanisms will be coexisting well. Who will care about me, so I can go and catch a shark with my friends or ride a motorbike, instead of staying in a queue. This is how I realized that urban transportation system should be designed in a different way.

Contemplating, I have found several paths:

• Technological passengers transportation, the one that Hyperloop One project performs. But completing such project right away is very challenging for me, although there are some solutions.
• Shoot shipments at electromagnetic trunk-line. But it’s 800 km/h, too speedy for the distance between a kindergarten and a house with adorable old ladies. This is yet to come.

The bottom line (maybe not a hyperdrive spaceship, but) is that electric motors, transmissions and controller systems tested in the severest environmental conditions will perfectly suit to challenges of districts and cities.

What we have now

Recently DHL has done delivery methods research and specifically highlighted tube logistics. That is exactly what we do. Maxitube can serve people all over the world, either large cities or remote settlements. System can be installed not only at construction phase, but also in a ready building. Our system cost will be included in a price of property.

Maxitube has already had a working prototype, that can transfer 5–7 kilograms shipments to the directions of any length.

How much will it cost to mount logistic tubes in a new neighborhood?

Cost of mounting Maxitube is about 5$ for a square meter, almost equal to installing water supply pipes during the design phase. But final cost of a tube should include geodesic surveys, engineering, trenches cost and so forth.

According to estimated calculations that take into consideration all factors, installing Maxitube will cost about $100 per 1 square meter.

How do we seek investors

Our main goal at the current moment is pilot project initiation: the functioning version in urban settings. We have been seeking for investors since 2016 September. We are negotiating with american and european investors. We have not signed written agreements yet, but smart mobility venture market knows us, we are being examined. But we are not ready to accept all terms of investors, they also can accept our terms without exceptions.

Now we are going to attract $3 million investment for a $30 million-entity company. We are negotiating about possible cooperation with a range of companies from the largest retailers to developers. We will start discussions with local authorities as soon as first written agreements is signed.

Now we are entering pre-ICO stage and we are ready for negotiations.

The team

There are 4 colleagues with me: Sergey Stolbunov as Chief Executive (CE), Ruslan Kulinich as Chief Software Architect, he is in charge of all automatization and system software development. Valery Ippolitov as Chief Technology Officer, in charge of all mechanisms. Igor Medvedev as Marketing Director manages our sales and international business development.

And I, Maxim Zyabkin, CEO, will be in charge of blog entries. Nice to meet you.