Munich Startup: Who are you and what do you do? Please introduce yourselves briefly!
Mauricio Esguerra, Magment: We are experienced development and business professionals who founded Magment five years ago. My partner, Ralph Lucke, is a materials scientist, and I'm a physicist. We now have a team that supports us in all aspects—from electrical engineering to business development, everything that goes with it. And the team is constantly growing; there are currently twelve of us and we hope to have 15 by the end of the year.
Our startup is based on an initial patent we filed 18 years ago: magnetic concrete for inductive applications. We then decided to found Magment based on this invention, which we acquired from our old company. We are the only company in the world to have this technology. We have since received or filed seven additional patents.
Munich Startup: What problem does your startup solve?
Mauricio Esguerra, Magment: We've set out to completely change the way electric vehicles are charged. Currently, it's a mess of cables, as you can see with electric cars, for example. E-scooters even have to be taken somewhere else to charge, and then they're returned the next day. Our inductive charging technology allows vehicles of any type to charge either while parked or while drivingWe're not just interested in electric cars or e-scooters – for example, forklifts and industrial robots are also particularly important to us. These can easily charge while driving and working in a warehouse or warehouse.
“We achieve the same efficiency levels as with cable charging”
Munich Startup: But that's been around for a long time!
Mauricio Esguerra, Magment: Not in this form. Until now, the biggest obstacle to such a technology was that there was no global standard for charging that applied to all vehicles from all manufacturers. This standard will only be published in July. Furthermore, high charging efficiency is a prerequisite for the success of such a system. We achieve the same efficiency levels as with cable charging, with between 90 and 94 percent of the energy used reaching the vehicle. The prerequisite for this is the use of coils in combination with magnetic materials. Conventional materials alone are far too expensive and not available in sufficient quantities. By applying concrete technology, however, we can make the whole thing very cost-effective and completely scalable. Instead of sand and gravel, we use magnetic particles that we mix into the cement. This allows us to use completely conventional concrete pouring processes.
Munich Startup: What have been your three biggest challenges so far?
Mauricio Esguerra, Magment: We have three major challenges that we are gradually overcoming. The first was the industrialization of our process. We are working with all the major cement manufacturers here, and they have also provided us with significant support. We have already successfully overcome this hurdle.
The next challenge was finding the right markets for our launch. It was a new application, so we defined a few target markets for ourselves: e-scooters, logistics, and also so-called fleet vehicles, such as taxis or shared cars. We can reach these markets better with our offering than, for example, end consumers. So we were able to overcome this hurdle as well.
Looking for investors
The third challenge is currently the most difficult: financing. We are in the process of attracting investors to help us with our marketing efforts. However, we have the enormous advantage of being able to manage the working capital with our cement partners. This means our financing is more geared toward ongoing product development and, of course, business development.
Munich Startup: How are things going?
Mauricio Esguerra, Magment: Business is going well; we were able to sell a large number of prototypes last year. These include projects in the scooter sector in Munich and at Purdue University in the USA, in the field of micromobility, and also in logistics. We've made good progress with our orders. This means we will be able to reach our first sales target by the end of the year.
We were also able to implement a project in the scooter sector during the coronavirus pandemic. There, in particular, we encountered the problem that many users avoided touching the vehicles that other users had previously used. To address this, we and a partner introduced a new technology: a UV disinfection system. We now offer this together with the inductive charging infrastructure – a complete contactless solution for charging and disinfecting e-scooters. Of course, this was born out of necessity, as our scooter business suffered due to the coronavirus pandemic. But this new solution enabled us to position ourselves very well. We hope to be able to pilot this soon as well.
Magment struggles a little with Munich
Munich Startup: How do you rate Munich as a startup location?
Mauricio Esguerra, Magment: On the one hand, Munich is ideal as a startup location because we have an incredible amount of resources and a wide range of opportunities to access all kinds of technologies and partnerships. However, we currently find the city's response a bit hesitant. For example, we suggested piloting the MVG's disinfection systems. But they aren't entirely convinced yet. Instead, we've found other cities where this works, such as Thessaloniki, Barcelona, or Arego in Portugal. We hope that perhaps a bit more enthusiasm will return.
But another very positive aspect in Munich is that we can set up our first pilots at Schwabinger Tor. It's a wonderful area because it's private property. So, everything runs a little more smoothly there. We hope to attract a lot of customers who want to see something demonstrated. Munich is ideal for this.
Munich Startup: Hidden champion or shooting star?
Mauricio Esguerra, Magment: We're still a hidden champion, but our visibility on social networks is steadily increasing worldwide. The idea of inductive charging with concrete is slowly gaining traction; it's very disruptive, very new, and very different. We're receiving an incredible amount of mail and inquiries from all over the world, so we notice that our status is slowly shifting toward that of a shooting star.
