One good turn deserves another, and San Diego alternative transmission maker Fallbrook Technologies is ready to shift to the next level. After working more than 10 years to develop a radical new transmission design that helps motors operate more efficiently, Fallbrook announced today it has secured $25.4 million in its first round of venture funding.
NGEN Partners, a Santa Barbara cleantech venture firm, led the financing with a $10 million investment. Another $10 million came from Robeco, the investment arm of Rabobank of The Netherlands. The remaining $5.4 million came from many of the company’s true believers, the angel investors who provided some $25 million in private funding to Fallbrook since the company was founded in 1998.
The additional funding is intended to help Fallbrook gear up and extend the commercialization of its proprietary “NuVinci” technology, a continuously variable “planetary” transmission that smoothly adjusts to increasing speeds without the need to change gears. A more detailed explanation is here.
Fallbrook introduced its transmission in markets for light electric vehicles and bicycles in 2006, and the company says market acceptance has increased steadily—especially in Europe. The company says a NuVinci-equipped bicycle won “Bike of the Year” in The Netherlands and the iF Design EUROBIKE Gold 2008 Award—which helps explain why the Dutch investment bank’s cleantech fund is in the deal. NGEN managing director Steven Parry
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.
View all posts by Bruce V. Bigelow