Fallbrook Follows Qualcomm’s Patent Strategy With Innovative Transmission For Vehicles

Bill Klehm may not be aware of his wordplay when he says, “We’re seeing significant traction in the European bicycle market and in light electric vehicles.”

Klehm, 45, is the chief executive of San Diego’s Fallbrook Technologies, a startup that has been developing an innovative transmission without gears. The company says its “NuVinci” technology is scalable and improves acceleration, performance, cost, and overall vehicle efficiency over conventional transmissions.

Fallbrook’s transmission, designed by San Diego inventor Don Miller, is known as a continuously variable planetary transmission, or CVP.

Unlike a conventional transmission, which uses a set of gears with specific fixed-speed ratios, a CVP uses a mechanism that changes seamlessly as a drive train accelerates and decelerates. In effect, the system provides an infinite number of gear ratios between its highest and lowest speeds.

NuVinci transmissionAt a time when U.S. automakers are reeling from the 2008 spike in gasoline prices and a litany of other problems, Klehm says, “I can accurately describe us as being overrun with requests to build transmissions for electric vehicles and for hybrid vehicles.”

The company, which has raised about $25 million from more than 80 private investors is not yet profitable. But Klehm remains optimistic, saying Fallbrook Technologies has been extending its business beyond bicycles and light electric vehicles such as golf carts.

Fallbrook’s seven-member board of directors includes Gary Jacobs, a San Diego investor and son of Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs; Gary Weiss, whose Weiss Group provides management, advisory, financing and executive search services to growth companies; and James Bartlett, a retired principal of Cleveland-based Primus Venture Partners.

Miller, a bicycle enthusiast, developed his original CVP design while tinkering in his garage to develop his concept for “the world’s fastest bike.”

Other continuously variable designs use belts, pulleys, and various doughnut-shaped designs, but Fallbrook’s design uses a set of steel balls to vary the transmission’s speed ratio. The balls

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.