1 00:00:00,060 --> 00:00:03,930 So the doors close. We enter an airlock, we go down a tube. 2 00:00:03,930 --> 00:00:09,990 The tube has a vacuum in it. It's not a perfect vacuum, but it's perfect enough vacuum. 3 00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:11,970 And what happens after 25 miles an hour? 4 00:00:12,180 --> 00:00:23,220 The pod levitates, the wheels folded, and it goes down the middle of the tube held in place by electromagnets at up to 500 miles an hour. 5 00:00:25,900 --> 00:00:32,840 Not having enough work. Climate change, funding, finance and shortages of fresh water. 6 00:00:33,230 --> 00:00:36,530 Energy transition. Large scale social disorder. 7 00:00:36,530 --> 00:00:42,320 Antibiotic resistant diseases. Education and deployment of private capital for social needs. 8 00:00:42,620 --> 00:00:49,810 Quantum computing. Hello and welcome to the Feature Business Podcast from Site Business School. 9 00:00:50,470 --> 00:00:57,700 I'm Emily Baron and each week I host a conversation on a topic that will define the future of business and wider society. 10 00:00:58,090 --> 00:01:02,890 Speaking to experts from Oxford University, leading businesspeople and entrepreneurs. 11 00:01:03,700 --> 00:01:08,890 The way we travel has a profound impact on both how and where we live. 12 00:01:08,920 --> 00:01:11,830 Currently, there are competing visions of the future of transport. 13 00:01:11,980 --> 00:01:20,900 One advocated by industry heavyweights, including Musk, is that we still travelling conventional vehicles, but that that time is not productive. 14 00:01:20,920 --> 00:01:25,090 We work, eat, sleep in our cars without having to worry about driving. 15 00:01:25,360 --> 00:01:30,550 The alternative is hyper fast travel either over or underground. 16 00:01:30,700 --> 00:01:33,129 To understand what this might look like today, 17 00:01:33,130 --> 00:01:40,170 I'm speaking to Nicole from Hyperloop one Virgin Hyperloop one is the company leading the development of Hyperloop, 18 00:01:40,660 --> 00:01:46,300 and they recently signed a contract in India for a link that would connect Mumbai and Poona in around 25 minutes. 19 00:01:49,240 --> 00:01:58,120 Hi. My name is Nicole. I'm the senior vice president for Virgin Hyperloop One, the company that's building a new mode of transportation. 20 00:01:58,120 --> 00:02:02,949 I'm sure we're going to be talking about this in the UK and I've worked for them for two years, 21 00:02:02,950 --> 00:02:08,229 but I've got a 30 plus year track record in I.T. technology. 22 00:02:08,230 --> 00:02:14,980 I've worked for three start-ups and I've worked for two very big companies, Hewlett Packard and Cisco Systems. 23 00:02:14,980 --> 00:02:20,170 So I'm a guy now trying to reinvent transportation. 24 00:02:20,860 --> 00:02:27,640 Okay. So the Hyperloop, as you said to me earlier, when you did a previous podcast, you mentioned Crash, the website. 25 00:02:27,780 --> 00:02:36,070 So many people who are looking and interested in the public and we hear a lot about it, but we like to make things very simple. 26 00:02:36,400 --> 00:02:42,490 So if you're talking to the right thing, if you are trying to we're going to explain the Hyperloop to a ten year old. 27 00:02:43,210 --> 00:02:47,020 How would you explain what the Hyperloop is? You know, Emily, it's funny you should answer that. 28 00:02:47,020 --> 00:02:49,720 I have actually done an event like ten year old. 29 00:02:49,990 --> 00:02:58,060 I could start off by like I did an event recently at the National Geographic Society in London, and it was sort of TEDx for kids, really great idea. 30 00:02:59,080 --> 00:03:02,350 And the average age was ten years old. 31 00:03:02,350 --> 00:03:06,670 I didn't know you were going to say that. And to this day, after giving hundreds of speeches, 32 00:03:07,060 --> 00:03:12,730 the single best question I ever got asked about the Hyperloop was from a ten year old girl, and I repeat it now. 33 00:03:13,090 --> 00:03:23,499 I was talking about how just to project in the UK to build, to upgrade the rail system is going to cost £100 billion and it's going to take 17 years. 34 00:03:23,500 --> 00:03:26,500 And at the end of the day, what do we get? Another train? 35 00:03:27,670 --> 00:03:29,350 And I said, Well, you know, 36 00:03:30,610 --> 00:03:37,320 why don't we spend £50 billion and get something that's four times faster and completely greener and and has all these benefits, etc., etc. 37 00:03:37,330 --> 00:03:44,410 And a hand went up and this ten year old girl said, if you had £50 billion, would you spend it on a Hyperloop? 38 00:03:46,410 --> 00:03:49,960 And and I thought about it. That is the single best question I've ever been asked. 39 00:03:50,560 --> 00:03:57,879 And because kids are wonderful, they have no filter. Right. Ask you the question and I posed probably for what was a little too long. 40 00:03:57,880 --> 00:04:01,990 And I said, well, first of all, if I had £50 billion, I probably wouldn't be standing here. 41 00:04:01,990 --> 00:04:02,950 I'd probably be doing something else. 42 00:04:03,250 --> 00:04:12,460 But if I had 50 billion, if I could reframe the question about £50 billion and I had to spend it on transportation system, then, then yes, I would. 43 00:04:12,790 --> 00:04:17,890 So what is it? Transport is terrible. We all know it's terrible and it's getting worse. 44 00:04:18,070 --> 00:04:20,470 And I don't have to give examples because everybody knows it. 45 00:04:20,740 --> 00:04:28,510 In particular, trains are still steel on steel, steel wheels and steel rails, which was a system invented in 1814. 46 00:04:28,510 --> 00:04:34,390 What I say to children is namely one other area of your life that has been unaffected by digitisation. 47 00:04:35,320 --> 00:04:39,550 You know, kids are growing up with the with the iPhones, they're growing up with Netflix, 48 00:04:40,480 --> 00:04:44,440 they're growing up with all of this amazing content and all these amazing capabilities. 49 00:04:44,440 --> 00:04:52,330 And then they get on a train. So what Hyperloop is it's a cross between an autonomous car and a spaceship. 50 00:04:52,600 --> 00:04:55,930 Right. And essentially, you book a journey through your phone. 51 00:04:56,170 --> 00:05:01,780 And let's say you get on the pod. The vehicle is called a pod. You're going to go to Edinburgh. 52 00:05:02,290 --> 00:05:06,129 I'm going to go to Leeds. We get in different parts. The pods aren't connected together. 53 00:05:06,130 --> 00:05:12,700 There's virtually a couple, right? So the doors close, we enter an airlock, we go down a tube. 54 00:05:12,700 --> 00:05:18,790 The tube has a vacuum in it. It's not a perfect vacuum, but it's perfect enough vacuum. 55 00:05:18,790 --> 00:05:20,740 And what happens after 25 miles an hour? 56 00:05:20,950 --> 00:05:32,020 The pod levitates, the wheels folded, and it goes down the middle of the tube held in place by electromagnets at up to 500 miles an hour. 57 00:05:32,680 --> 00:05:40,930 And then when it gets to the destination, my pod switches off to Leeds, your pod carries on and eventually you arrive in Edinburgh. 58 00:05:40,930 --> 00:05:42,580 So it's direct to destination. 59 00:05:42,970 --> 00:05:51,580 So unlike a train, high speed train, high speed rail is only high speed when it's moving, but it still has to stop by the timetable for trains. 60 00:05:51,580 --> 00:05:56,950 There's no timetable for the Hyperloop believes like an Uber, it leaves when you're ready. 61 00:05:57,070 --> 00:06:01,750 Okay. And as a result of that, it's kind of like a physical version of the Internet. 62 00:06:02,350 --> 00:06:05,479 So when I say ten years, well, it sort of works like the Internet. 63 00:06:05,480 --> 00:06:10,570 They go, well, like the Internet. So in other words, it comes to me, right? 64 00:06:10,570 --> 00:06:14,920 And I use my phone to book it and I can go anywhere I want. 65 00:06:15,310 --> 00:06:18,370 And I say, Yeah, that that's exactly how it works. 66 00:06:18,700 --> 00:06:26,200 And you know, there's no paper ticket, there's no timetable, there's no stopping where everybody else wants to stop. 67 00:06:26,500 --> 00:06:33,399 And at the end of the day, you can enter at the end of the journey, could interoperate with an autonomous car taking the last mile. 68 00:06:33,400 --> 00:06:38,350 Or if you're a parcel, you could have a drone at the beginning and a drone at the end. 69 00:06:38,710 --> 00:06:47,890 So you could deliver all of these Amazon Prime parcels that are exploding as they kill the retail industry and all of those white van. 70 00:06:48,380 --> 00:06:53,090 Come off the road. And then the final thing you say to them is, by the way, it's carbon free. 71 00:06:54,050 --> 00:06:59,150 It's carbon free. And then they go, Well, why haven't we implemented it? 72 00:06:59,840 --> 00:07:03,130 And that's a very good question. That is a very good question. So we're going to come on to those. 73 00:07:03,140 --> 00:07:07,070 I just want to ask a few more questions about the technology, because it's really interesting. 74 00:07:07,520 --> 00:07:11,420 How is it carbon free? Okay. So first of all, it's fully electric, right? 75 00:07:11,720 --> 00:07:15,110 There's no carbon fuels. Secondly, we take power off the grid. 76 00:07:16,280 --> 00:07:19,640 So you plug it into the grid, so principally by renewable energy. 77 00:07:19,910 --> 00:07:27,110 But let's just say ordinary electricity, we step it up to a certain voltage frequency in order to make the levitation system work. 78 00:07:27,530 --> 00:07:33,079 We have a linear motor, which is the same as a rotary motor that we recognise from our physics courses. 79 00:07:33,080 --> 00:07:41,150 But instead of it going round and round and round, it goes forward, linear motor forward, and when it gets to 25 kilometres per hour, it levitates. 80 00:07:41,480 --> 00:07:47,090 It creates a electromagnetic differential which actually causes the the pot to lift. 81 00:07:48,020 --> 00:07:55,339 Now the way I explain this, if we go back to the the ten year old event, we actually stated that if you think if you think, you know, 82 00:07:55,340 --> 00:08:02,870 why do aeroplanes take off which is something that still to this day after hundreds of flights still I still think that the reason 83 00:08:02,870 --> 00:08:09,679 is because the air goes up forward propulsion and the egos fester over that little curve top of the wings and it goes underneath. 84 00:08:09,680 --> 00:08:13,999 It creates a physical pressure, air pressure differential which causes lift. 85 00:08:14,000 --> 00:08:18,050 We create an electromagnetic differential which causes it to lift. 86 00:08:18,650 --> 00:08:21,710 So. So once it lifts, we turn all the power off. 87 00:08:22,820 --> 00:08:26,690 There's no air in the tube, so it glides. It's like, then it's a spaceship. 88 00:08:27,570 --> 00:08:31,130 Turns out it's really cool that it turns out. 89 00:08:31,160 --> 00:08:32,530 Now, what we have to do is keep it. 90 00:08:32,580 --> 00:08:39,360 Keep it in exactly the middle of the tube on the horizontal and vertical plane, which we do with with electromagnetic magnets. 91 00:08:39,360 --> 00:08:41,720 So electromagnetic capabilities. 92 00:08:42,440 --> 00:08:51,230 But it turns out that we believe you don't need a repeater station to give it into the propulsion or the boost about every 20, 25 kilometres. 93 00:08:52,160 --> 00:08:57,500 So it only uses electricity to initially accelerate it. 94 00:08:57,500 --> 00:09:00,170 Once you get to the velocity you want, the power goes off. 95 00:09:00,350 --> 00:09:08,810 There's power in the pod lights, cooling, heating power for your iPad, but that's just like a jet aircraft. 96 00:09:08,820 --> 00:09:18,440 But outside the part, there's no power. And then when it breaks, it uses regenerative braking like a Tesla, so it generates electricity. 97 00:09:18,440 --> 00:09:22,700 And we actually use something which many of your listeners will know is whose adequate braking. 98 00:09:22,880 --> 00:09:30,880 Right. Which essentially, if you if you hold two really powerful magnets and you hold them a certain way and you move them past each other, 99 00:09:30,890 --> 00:09:34,290 you feel a bit of friction. The current got it. 100 00:09:34,520 --> 00:09:42,709 So we use any current braking. So on, on a 500 kilometre journey to net it out, we would use electricity for about 10% of the journey. 101 00:09:42,710 --> 00:09:51,200 So it's not completely green, but it's certainly about ten x greener than any other existing form of transport in 102 00:09:51,200 --> 00:09:55,340 the Middle East where we're very active because I run for the worldwide go to market, 103 00:09:55,910 --> 00:09:59,120 I think I've done 15 trips to Dubai in the Middle East, 104 00:09:59,120 --> 00:10:05,299 of course, with a few solar panels, not at not an opportunity we have here in the UK on this snowy day in Oxford, 105 00:10:05,300 --> 00:10:10,670 but in other parts of the world with a few solar panels, you can actually make it net energy positive. 106 00:10:10,730 --> 00:10:17,300 No, it's it can be the world's first transportation system that generates energy through solar panels. 107 00:10:17,450 --> 00:10:23,979 Good example. One, I just want to ask you a little bit jumping back to the individual experience. 108 00:10:23,980 --> 00:10:27,799 So I book it on my phone. Do I go to a police station? 109 00:10:27,800 --> 00:10:31,100 Do I get out of my station? So let's do it. 110 00:10:32,240 --> 00:10:36,620 Let's just take the first version of the technology, which is forget the autonomous car. 111 00:10:36,950 --> 00:10:41,179 You're not a parcel set, forget the drone. Let's say you go to a station. 112 00:10:41,180 --> 00:10:45,190 By the way, we don't call it a station, we call it a portal multicolour. 113 00:10:45,440 --> 00:10:50,150 Yeah, it is much cooler. But also think of what a railway station looks like. 114 00:10:50,300 --> 00:10:55,370 I mean, these things are about 100 to 200 acres, all these tracks side by side. 115 00:10:55,460 --> 00:10:58,730 So Hyperloop doesn't need any of that. It needs a tube. 116 00:10:59,060 --> 00:11:03,379 Right. And the biggest issue we've got is actually just having an off boarding platform. 117 00:11:03,380 --> 00:11:07,580 Some people can board concurrently because the issue is the elapsed journey time, 118 00:11:07,940 --> 00:11:16,070 not the point to point journey to the biggest component of time for a journey is actually how long it takes people to get on and off the pod. 119 00:11:16,250 --> 00:11:21,260 But you can solve that by having multiple parallel platforms, platforms at different levels underground, 120 00:11:21,920 --> 00:11:25,010 like the London Underground, when you switch lines that way. 121 00:11:25,670 --> 00:11:36,890 Okay, so you walk or you cycle to the station, you, you, you, you leave your bike there, you walk and your phone says, go to gate 37. 122 00:11:37,430 --> 00:11:43,160 Remember you're going to Edinburgh. Gate 37 is a behind gate 37 is one part. 123 00:11:43,310 --> 00:11:48,440 It takes about eight people. Okay. If there are other people who are going to Edinburgh at that exact time, 124 00:11:48,860 --> 00:11:53,480 they get in the pod with you analogy being like a ski cabin that's going up to the. 125 00:11:53,600 --> 00:11:57,320 Yeah. The mountain. There's another part behind you, but it's not connected to you. 126 00:11:57,610 --> 00:12:03,170 Hmm. Okay. In this case, that pod could be me going to Leeds, and we'll do a high speed switch. 127 00:12:03,620 --> 00:12:08,960 Engineers always ask is, how can you do that? Because you can't have anything that physically moves at 400 miles an hour. 128 00:12:09,230 --> 00:12:15,650 But we believe we know how to do high speed switching, and that's actually the next bit of technological proof. 129 00:12:15,650 --> 00:12:21,350 But if you assume for the moment we can do that because we've built the Hyperloop so far, you're, you know, 130 00:12:21,350 --> 00:12:28,580 sitting down in this part of your pod and any other passengers who are with you is going to Edinburgh. 131 00:12:29,480 --> 00:12:33,380 Lots of myths around the Hyperloop. So let me address, if I can, some shoes. 132 00:12:34,250 --> 00:12:38,960 Will your face peel off? No, Emily, it won't. 133 00:12:39,980 --> 00:12:45,200 That is the single biggest question I guess I see on the Internet. 134 00:12:45,200 --> 00:12:53,029 It's your face will peel off. And my answer to that is, look, if you've been on an aeroplane, an aeroplane starts stationary, 135 00:12:53,030 --> 00:12:57,920 the accelerated point to 5G, they go to 500 miles an hour, they slow down and they stop. 136 00:12:58,130 --> 00:13:01,820 Your face doesn't peel off on an aeroplane. I just describe the Hyperloop. 137 00:13:02,370 --> 00:13:09,970 Now, what's the difference? Well, the aeroplanes go up in the air, not because they want to leap over tall buildings like Superman. 138 00:13:10,860 --> 00:13:14,900 What? Aeroplanes go up in the air to get low pressure so they're more fuel efficient. 139 00:13:15,380 --> 00:13:17,360 Well, we bring the sky down to the ground. 140 00:13:17,750 --> 00:13:27,230 So the air pressure in our Hyperloop that we built in Nevada is at about 100 Pascals, which is equivalent to the air pressure at about 200,000 feet. 141 00:13:28,130 --> 00:13:33,070 So it's a sort of four or five nines vacuum in 99.99. 142 00:13:33,070 --> 00:13:40,100 And I know no people have been over it yet, although I know we're going to do a live test on this podcast. 143 00:13:40,380 --> 00:13:44,120 Okay. We know people have been in it because you need a safety certificate. 144 00:13:44,180 --> 00:13:47,150 Right. But let's say so you didn't know I was going to ask you. 145 00:13:47,180 --> 00:13:57,290 So let's say I we had 100 tests of the Hyperloop on a test track and we put sheep in there. 146 00:13:57,290 --> 00:14:00,859 We put animals in there absolutely fine. And nothing happened. 147 00:14:00,860 --> 00:14:09,769 And we proved that we can do it. And then I said to you, there are eight seats in the in the in the first Hyperloop and a chance to 148 00:14:09,770 --> 00:14:13,880 make history and be the first person in the world to travel in the Hyperloop. 149 00:14:14,360 --> 00:14:18,860 And I'm going to offer you one seat. Emily, would you want that ticket? 150 00:14:19,190 --> 00:14:22,610 I'm an MBA. Of course. I do think it's a good answer. 151 00:14:23,000 --> 00:14:26,290 I'm glad you said that. Otherwise, this podcast would have gone down. Exactly. 152 00:14:27,140 --> 00:14:34,160 And the point is that 78% of people say yes, 20% of people say no and that's okay. 153 00:14:34,160 --> 00:14:37,549 That's, you know, with any new technology, autonomous cars, no way. 154 00:14:37,550 --> 00:14:45,080 I'm not the chair of the steering wheel, but there'll be a Yuri Gagarin of Hyperloop analogy and you know, people have been in it. 155 00:14:45,470 --> 00:14:51,709 Yet you need regulatory approval. So we just want to project in India, Mumbai, goona hundred and 50 million people. 156 00:14:51,710 --> 00:14:55,580 It's going to be a four and a half hour journey. We'll do it in 20 something minutes. 157 00:14:56,330 --> 00:15:02,840 Got announced by our chairman, Richard Branson with Prime Minister Modi and for Maharashtra state, 158 00:15:02,840 --> 00:15:10,530 which is the second most populous state in India and hundred and 12 million people that will could well be the world's first Hyperloop. 159 00:15:10,530 --> 00:15:16,129 It depends on how quickly people in the Middle East move as part of the process of building the Hyperloop, 160 00:15:16,130 --> 00:15:25,370 you work with the transport regulator like any new mode of transportation, flying cars, autonomous cars, and you have to get a safety certificate. 161 00:15:25,910 --> 00:15:29,870 And so there's about a 12 to 18 month period of regulatory testing. 162 00:15:29,870 --> 00:15:36,410 Once you get a safety certificate, you're approved to build safety certificates and regulatory approvals are regional. 163 00:15:36,620 --> 00:15:42,319 So there's one for Europe pretty much, and we'll see what happens when the UK leaves the European Union. 164 00:15:42,320 --> 00:15:48,600 But let's assume there's one for Europe. The Middle East will often accept a European one, but they do have their own regulatory testing. 165 00:15:48,600 --> 00:15:52,759 The US definitely has their own. And what are you regulating as? 166 00:15:52,760 --> 00:15:55,999 As a train? As a plane? What are you rewriting? 167 00:15:56,000 --> 00:16:02,840 That is an excellent question. So that really is a great question, because let me tell you what we don't want to do. 168 00:16:03,050 --> 00:16:11,750 We do not want to talk to the train regulator. If we talk to the train regulator, we will be in eight years of discussions. 169 00:16:11,750 --> 00:16:16,790 I was with Secretary Fox in the US who used to run the Department of Transportation for the US. 170 00:16:17,250 --> 00:16:21,829 Now he's no longer Elaine Chao. We've we've got a first name which is now the Secretary Transportation, 171 00:16:21,830 --> 00:16:26,380 but now he's no longer in government because he could be on panels or there's nothing to be removed. 172 00:16:26,720 --> 00:16:29,900 And he made this point. But this is this is videos on our website. 173 00:16:30,980 --> 00:16:38,270 He he made the point that one of the problems that autonomous cars had is that they actually call themselves autonomous cars. 174 00:16:38,270 --> 00:16:42,259 So the car regulator instantly went to them. 175 00:16:42,260 --> 00:16:45,829 And there is a there's a series of regulations that are to do with cars. 176 00:16:45,830 --> 00:16:50,030 Now, in our case, it is the train regulator comes to us. They're going to ask us where the guard is. 177 00:16:50,150 --> 00:16:54,150 Right? They're going to ask us about the driver. They're going to ask us. About the signal box. 178 00:16:54,540 --> 00:16:57,960 They're going to ask us about the timetable because they have, you know, 179 00:16:58,200 --> 00:17:05,099 years where in the case of train, they've got over 200 years worth of regulatory rules and approvals. 180 00:17:05,100 --> 00:17:11,940 And this is hundreds of safety cases. What happens if Mr. Smith gets on but gets his umbrella report in the door? 181 00:17:13,080 --> 00:17:19,409 What happens if Mrs. Smith gets on but her dog is still on the platform and she's inside and the doors close? 182 00:17:19,410 --> 00:17:24,870 I mean, all these things are really important, particularly to Mrs. Smith, and the dog brother's going to be okay. 183 00:17:25,110 --> 00:17:28,829 But what we've said is we want a new form of regulation. 184 00:17:28,830 --> 00:17:35,550 So in the case of European Union, DG Move, which is the European entity responsible for setting transport regulations for Europe, 185 00:17:36,360 --> 00:17:40,200 we want to try and get a Hyperloop going in Europe, 186 00:17:40,200 --> 00:17:45,420 in a host nation so that they can be proactive to get ahead of the curve, 187 00:17:45,690 --> 00:17:50,790 to start to define the regulatory environment as opposed to take an existing one and apply it. 188 00:17:50,790 --> 00:17:59,070 Now one of the big advantages we've got, which is high speed rail doesn't have, is that we can actually design the technology to meet the safety case. 189 00:17:59,850 --> 00:18:04,230 High speed rail already exists and then you have to you have to prove that your product meets the safety case. 190 00:18:04,710 --> 00:18:10,770 So in the Middle East, our customer has been RTI, which is the road transport authority of Dubai. 191 00:18:11,520 --> 00:18:16,470 They're regulated. So we're saying, well, how would you want the Hyperloop to behave? 192 00:18:16,620 --> 00:18:23,080 So we actually designed the technology to meet the safety case. And so that's one of the great advantages of new technology. 193 00:18:23,100 --> 00:18:30,839 Fantastic. So I wanted to switch to the Middle East and India, which has been well an advance. 194 00:18:30,840 --> 00:18:39,480 I mean, the UK is still arguing about HS2, Crossrail, whereas more emerging markets are really leapfrog. 195 00:18:39,900 --> 00:18:44,130 And is it going to be those economies that get that fast? 196 00:18:44,340 --> 00:18:50,340 Why is it so much easier there? And I guess at what point are we going to see the London or Oxford to Edinburgh? 197 00:18:50,580 --> 00:18:58,170 Hopefully, yeah. You know, this is obviously a, you know, NBA audience and alumni audience. 198 00:18:58,170 --> 00:19:06,570 Maybe as students of history we can look back and see patterns and you think about transport innovations and the West versus the East. 199 00:19:06,810 --> 00:19:11,790 They were all in the West. I mean, I talked about, you know, George Stevens in 1840 created the train. 200 00:19:12,600 --> 00:19:16,470 I like to joke that if he came back to life today and saw HS2, 201 00:19:17,310 --> 00:19:23,550 he would point at it and say that's a train because it basically it's basically the same is a better train, but it's the train. 202 00:19:23,700 --> 00:19:28,710 And then, of course, we had cars in the late 19th century. 203 00:19:29,610 --> 00:19:35,340 We we had aeroplanes in 1903, Kittyhawk Beach, North Carolina, first plane, the Wright Brothers. 204 00:19:36,000 --> 00:19:41,549 You could argue that we then had the next really big leap forward and everything incrementally improved consistently. 205 00:19:41,550 --> 00:19:50,550 But the next big leap for us was arguably the US interstate system, which in the 1950s was completed and produced. 206 00:19:50,550 --> 00:19:55,020 35% of the growth of the US was directly attributable to the US interstate system. 207 00:19:55,770 --> 00:19:59,260 And since then, for a while we had Concorde. Mm hmm. 208 00:19:59,970 --> 00:20:05,190 Was it a plane route? It sort of seemed like it sort of was a plane, but it was definitely something different. 209 00:20:05,190 --> 00:20:08,249 And of course, that's probably the only example in history where technology has gone backwards. 210 00:20:08,250 --> 00:20:17,879 Yeah. So, so now we've had nothing for a while and all these systems are slowly getting gummed up and they're getting slower and various reasons. 211 00:20:17,880 --> 00:20:21,660 But travel is awful. Travel is awful and getting worse. 212 00:20:21,900 --> 00:20:26,719 Now when I spoke to there's an organisation in India called NITI Aayog, 213 00:20:26,720 --> 00:20:30,240 the National Institute for the Transformation of India, run by the Very Visionary. 214 00:20:30,390 --> 00:20:37,080 It's a commercial organisation that reports directly to the Prime Minister and it's run by a very visionary man called Amitabh Kant. 215 00:20:37,770 --> 00:20:44,580 And what Amitabh said is India will do this before the West and the reason is the West will be slow. 216 00:20:44,610 --> 00:20:51,570 We've talked about that, but more importantly, we have a we are on a mission to bring India up to date. 217 00:20:52,170 --> 00:20:58,320 And actually we've learnt a very valuable lesson in in telecoms and those leapfrog the wording is leapfrog. 218 00:20:59,070 --> 00:21:07,020 India went from telegraph poles to 4G in a very short period of time and by the way, very low cost handsets with very low cost calling. 219 00:21:07,320 --> 00:21:15,840 When I was in Mumbai recently as part of the deals that we've announced and there are parts of Mumbai 220 00:21:16,380 --> 00:21:22,709 that you get a better 4G signal than parts of the many parts of Europe and many parts of the US. 221 00:21:22,710 --> 00:21:25,980 I mean, they the 4G signal in India is really good. 222 00:21:26,550 --> 00:21:32,260 They understand leapfrog and they understand that this is the way that their country will will continue to grow. 223 00:21:32,290 --> 00:21:37,860 They just released their GDP figures yesterday. India is now the fastest growing economy in the world, overtaking China. 224 00:21:38,490 --> 00:21:42,030 They are going to use technology to keep on accelerating. 225 00:21:42,030 --> 00:21:46,710 I mean, it is it is not just an idea, it's a government strategy. 226 00:21:46,830 --> 00:21:50,700 Do by which, you know, famously 60 years ago was. 227 00:21:52,090 --> 00:21:58,180 Trading on pearl divers and trading by boat is an unbelievable city. 228 00:21:58,180 --> 00:22:04,840 But they they they understand, as I've seen some previously, that the eye of a needle is more valuable than the needle, 229 00:22:05,290 --> 00:22:11,499 which means that if you can get people to come to you on their way to somewhere else, your economy will grow. 230 00:22:11,500 --> 00:22:15,910 A transport network is directly linked to the GDP and the productivity of a nation. 231 00:22:16,480 --> 00:22:21,390 We've proven that here in the UK with the London Underground. Now I'm older than you, Emily. 232 00:22:21,400 --> 00:22:31,270 Your podcast viewers can probably tell that from. But when I was growing up area, there used to be London and Greater London, now it's London. 233 00:22:32,150 --> 00:22:37,840 And the reason is that the, the, the, the tube system has extended its tentacles all over London. 234 00:22:37,840 --> 00:22:42,880 The definition of London is kind of the tube map. Yeah. So it's direct correlation for London. 235 00:22:43,240 --> 00:22:46,719 The effectiveness of transportation for citizens drives economic growth. 236 00:22:46,720 --> 00:22:50,650 Now, in the case of the U.K., unfortunately, that's sucked the growth away from the north of England. 237 00:22:51,400 --> 00:22:57,040 But Amsterdam, Holland understand that with Schiphol and Rotterdam, Dubai understands that, 238 00:22:57,040 --> 00:23:04,000 Singapore understand that, and India are in a wonderful position with the way their economy is growing. 239 00:23:04,330 --> 00:23:10,000 But if they if they leapfrog their archaic transportation system, 240 00:23:10,000 --> 00:23:18,880 where it takes currently four and a half hours to travel from Mumbai to Poona and can get it down to 20 minutes for 150 million passengers a year, 241 00:23:18,970 --> 00:23:25,420 which, by the way, is just to volumes at a price which is less than half of high speed rail. 242 00:23:25,810 --> 00:23:27,850 They're going to have a national competitive advantage. 243 00:23:28,240 --> 00:23:42,940 Think of the billions of hours a year the world wastes on travel and are not moving, but stationary travel, the airports, traffic jams. 244 00:23:43,300 --> 00:23:49,030 So if you can change the lives of a billion people, you can actually change the productivity of that country. 245 00:23:49,630 --> 00:23:53,650 And certain countries see that correlation. Certain countries don't. 246 00:23:54,010 --> 00:24:00,010 The ones that currently don't are the ones that used to but now are sitting on what they've got. 247 00:24:00,070 --> 00:24:05,380 And I believe that some of the most forward thinking is happening in emerging markets on this subject. 248 00:24:06,130 --> 00:24:09,640 So I want to sort of end with a bit more of a kind of personal question. 249 00:24:09,640 --> 00:24:15,100 You know, you described in brief your career to date some big technology companies, some start ups. 250 00:24:15,790 --> 00:24:20,740 Why have you joined the IPO? Why am I so crazy? 251 00:24:21,270 --> 00:24:23,860 I mean, I'll tell know how to answer that question. 252 00:24:23,860 --> 00:24:30,040 So you're right, I, I was always the change manager, the disruptor, the troublemaker in the large company. 253 00:24:30,040 --> 00:24:35,799 You know, when Carly Fiorina became CEO of HP, Sun Microsystems with a dot.com, 254 00:24:35,800 --> 00:24:40,470 HP was Scott McNealy, famously said the big, fat, happy printer company. 255 00:24:41,380 --> 00:24:49,630 So I led an incubator cross company team to actually create an Internet business inside HP, 256 00:24:50,800 --> 00:24:54,580 then did a couple of start-ups and then went back, went to Cisco, 257 00:24:54,580 --> 00:25:03,670 and last two years at Cisco were trying to create a model for cloud and managed services or a software based model for Cisco, because Cisco was, 258 00:25:03,940 --> 00:25:10,599 you know, had the highest percentage of any tech company in the world based on pure box revenue, not the situation now today. 259 00:25:10,600 --> 00:25:14,830 And the share price has responded. But yeah, I have. I've got a now I'm back in the starter. 260 00:25:15,700 --> 00:25:21,720 The honest answer to the question is I had retired two years ago and I, 261 00:25:22,330 --> 00:25:25,750 I was going to dabble in a whole bunch of things and I got invited to see the 262 00:25:25,750 --> 00:25:31,380 Hyperloop and I went out to Nevada and I talk to them and sometimes it's, 263 00:25:31,600 --> 00:25:35,889 it's just little things that cause you to make big decisions. 264 00:25:35,890 --> 00:25:42,070 And I, I looked at this thing and I couldn't get I thought, well, do I want to work for a transportation company? 265 00:25:42,070 --> 00:25:50,590 Oh, my God. So boring. No, I don't want to do it. And then I looked at it and I they were explaining that it's sort of like packet switching and yeah, 266 00:25:50,590 --> 00:25:56,740 there's going to be switches and routers and there's going to be tubes and it's direct to destination and it'll be first and last mile. 267 00:25:57,160 --> 00:26:01,270 And I suddenly thought, Oh my God, it's not a transportation system. 268 00:26:01,630 --> 00:26:05,290 It's not a transportation system, it's a physical version of the internet. 269 00:26:05,470 --> 00:26:15,220 I just describe the internet packet switching data, voice video, Hyperloop people, freight cars, high speed switching direct to destination On-Demand. 270 00:26:15,430 --> 00:26:16,480 It'll come to your door. 271 00:26:17,350 --> 00:26:25,180 The Uber will come to your door and it will take you to your destination and autonomous door to door journeys over huge distances at very high speed. 272 00:26:25,570 --> 00:26:29,889 And it it's a physical version of the Internet, of course, it's a transportation system. 273 00:26:29,890 --> 00:26:34,480 But if in 20 years time the Internet isn't a way of moving digital packets very 274 00:26:34,480 --> 00:26:39,070 fast down fibre plus fibre Internet is the biggest disruptor we've ever seen, 275 00:26:39,610 --> 00:26:42,879 all business processes. So you then start thinking, what could the Hyperloop do? 276 00:26:42,880 --> 00:26:48,880 And you think about delivering, you know, in India, same day delivery of parcels in India, unthinkable. 277 00:26:49,450 --> 00:26:58,780 Unthinkable. The ability for a ship to unload at sea and for the Hyperloop to take the packages inland and distribute them. 278 00:26:59,020 --> 00:27:05,499 That this system we've got today where all the containers go on the dockside and then trucks drive through the city with all 279 00:27:05,500 --> 00:27:11,830 the pollution to pick the containers up and drive them out one at a time to go on a freeway system that all disappears, 280 00:27:11,950 --> 00:27:20,499 that all disappears. And so you change freight distribution, the ability to take to airports that are like this, like Heathrow, 281 00:27:20,500 --> 00:27:27,910 Gatwick, we're having to build new runways and they cost a lot £18 billion for Heathrow's third runway. 282 00:27:28,360 --> 00:27:35,320 But with Hyperloop, Gatwick is 3 minutes away. So you can now have virtual airports and have airside connections. 283 00:27:35,590 --> 00:27:41,440 So you start thinking of things you could do that you could not not dream of before because you had a bottleneck. 284 00:27:41,860 --> 00:27:45,669 That's exactly what the Internet did. So my belief is that it was your last question. 285 00:27:45,670 --> 00:27:51,340 So my belief to finish is that in 20 years time when first of all, I hope I really have retired, 286 00:27:52,450 --> 00:28:03,040 but in 20 years time we will actually be talking more about transport enabled disruption, business model disruption. 287 00:28:04,370 --> 00:28:09,530 Dan, about a technology of pods in vacuum tubes. 288 00:28:09,890 --> 00:28:13,100 Right. And I believe that's the big story here. 289 00:28:13,550 --> 00:28:20,990 And that's why it's such an exciting time. And that's why I actually came out of retirement that I thought, I can't watch somebody else do this. 290 00:28:21,680 --> 00:28:24,860 Fantastic. Thank you so much. Thank you. Really brilliant conversation. 291 00:28:24,860 --> 00:28:41,260 It was cranky. Thank you for listening to the Oxford Future Business Podcast presented by Site Business School. 292 00:28:41,860 --> 00:28:47,110 Next week I'm in conversation with Professor Richard Barker and Carter Powers discussing the 293 00:28:47,110 --> 00:28:51,700 carbon bubble and the ticking time bomb on the balance sheet of the world's largest companies. 294 00:28:52,420 --> 00:28:57,700 Please subscribe on iTunes and if you want to find out more about what we discussed in today's episode, 295 00:28:57,970 --> 00:29:05,650 you can by following the link in the description. The Future Business Podcast was created by Brady, Patrick, Mike Klein, Paris and Emily. 296 00:29:06,070 --> 00:29:07,540 Thank you for listening and goodbye.