Michael Mangion announces end of mobility start-up: ‘Being mission-driven can make you blindly dogmatic’

A London-based start-up led by a Malta-born founder is set to close down this year, despite an innovative offering that looked set to take the urban mobility space by storm following a successful trial of its technology in 2022.

Michael Mangion, founder and CEO of Trilvee, referred to start-up trade publication Sifted’s declaration that 2024 will be the “year of RIPs”, noting in a post on LinkedIn that this will “definitely be the case for Trilvee in one way.”

Trilvee promised to revolutionise the way we get from A to B by eliminating the need for parking and drastically reducing traffic. It sought to do this by using a smaller vehicle that could be controlled remotely and delivered to the next person who needs to use it.

This would have eliminated the time needed to find parking, and saved on the parking space needed since the vehicle would have maximised its usage.

In 2022, a live demonstration of the concept saw one of its vehicles being driven around Ta’ Qali in Malta by a driver situated in London.

However, Mr Mangion admits that he did not “appreciate just how rapidly and completely the world was changing around us,” describing it as a major mistake.

“When you’re mission driven and want to fundamentally change the way we do things, it can make you blindly dogmatic,” he said. “Lesson to be learned.”

He added: “For me, the biggest challenge was deciding to stop fighting the wrong battle and commit to finding a new challenge and then taking those first steps. The decision to leave behind the metaphorical crash and start walking had to be made so that the team – who had mostly stuck together in a frozen rictus through the whole ordeal – could also move on and find new life.”

Mr Mangion described the years he spent working on Trilvee as “some of the best years of my life – which also means some of the most challenging too.”

He said he now wants to take the industry knowledge he’s gained and continue to play in this field while also investigating how the lessons learned and technology built can be applied in other areas.