THE VISIONARY: VASILIY SHKONDIN

Shkondin started working on the idea, he made motors in his kitchen. He created the first sample of a pulse-inertial motor in the early 1980s. Shkondin then worked at the Pedagogika publishing house and at the Soviet-Canadian publishing house Book Printshop, where his schedule was quite sparing. "I tried to devote all my time to perfecting pulse technology," says Shkondin, "I worked at the publishing house just to have money to live on. As a result, over the course of ten years, I produced about 70 engine options that could be used in various types of vehicles."

The original principles of unipolar and alternating pulses created inside the motor by an electromechanical trigger laid down in Shkondin motor are confirmed by a dozen of Russian and international patents that the inventor has received. While driving, the trigger allows part of the electricity to be returned to the battery. This significantly increases efficiency and ensures the superiority of the motor in the transportation sector. In addition, it does not have 10-20 nodes like other electric motors, but o ly five, and there is no external electronic control. The use of a small number of parts in the Shkondin motor increases its reliability, and the cost of production is two times lower half then that of other types of electric motors.

First, the inventor installed the engine on a wheelchair, then on a bicycle, scooter and motorcycle. “The motor has performed very well in the operation of these vehicles”, says Shkondin. “An additional advantage was that with the motor they could drive without a gearbox, gears or transmissions. Thus, the safety margin was increased significantly.”

Shkondin began exhibiting his engines at exhibitions in the early 1990s, when he realized that he had moved from the level of a homegrown "lefty" to serious invention. The Russian took grand prizes at the invention showrooms in Brussels, Seoul, Geneva, Paris, Hanover, Orlando and other exhibitions, but few people showed commercial interest in his engines.

"Only once, in the mid-1980s, employees of a Russian company offered to install the motor on wheelchairs”, says Shkondin. ‘I agreed, and now wheelchairs with my engine are produced in Russia, although that version of the motor is already outdated. In fact, the guys simply stole my invention. At first we agreed that I would enter the company as a shareholder. But after the first engines were installed on the wheelchairs, the company disappeared. Then the people who worked there started new companies and started making strollers with the same motor. But I was not going to chase them and demand contributions - I was happy that even an outdated motor model was successfully used in practice”.

The turning point for the Shkondin engine came in 2002, when the inventor exhibited it at the Moscow International Salon of Industrial Property "Archimedes-2002". Shkondin was approached by representatives of the Flinstone Technologies, British venture investment fund searching for promising Russian technologies to create a business based on them and bring it to global markets.

“We saw that the Shkondin motor had amazing commercial advantages: simplicity, reliability and affordability,” says Flintstone Technologies founder and CEO Ian Woodcock. “These are exactly the factors that are ideal for creating any viable product on the market.”

The Foundation invited the inventor to England. For six months, the Shkondin motor was tested in laboratories at Oxford and Southampton universities. British scientists confirmed all the technical characteristics stated in the patents and came to the conclusion that the Russian inventor’s motor surpasses others in dynamism by 50% and in operational efficiency by 30%. After that Flintstone Technologies offered Shkondin to conclude a partnership agreement on cooperation. So in the fall of 2003, Ultra Motor emerged, co-founded by Flintstone Technologies, which contributed 1.4 million pounds sterling, and Shkondin, who invested his intellectual property in the firm.

It was assumed that the main scientific activities of UM would take place in Russia, where the company would create a department of innovative developments. Therefore, Flintstone Technologies started looking for a Russian co-investor. In April 2004, the Russian Technologies venture fund accepted the offer to become one of the shareholders

"Unlike Flintstone Technologies, we do not start projects at such an early stage, when there is only a product prototype, but no business plan or business model," explains Joe Bowman, senior investment manager at the fund and UM board member for Russian Technologies, "Before entering the project, we conducted our own technical expertise to understand how the invention is unique. Like any venture fund, we wanted to assess the size of the possible market and the share we could take. And studying the situation convinced us that in the long term we could enter the entire electric vehicle market, which we believe will become a key industry in the transportation sector in the next ten years».

However, there was no electric transport market yet, but since the appearance of the motor wheel in Japan in 1994, the electric bicycle market has been rapidly developing. Now they are produced by all the world's light transport manufacturers, many of which have transferred their production to China and Taiwan. According to Vladimir Ermishev, general director of the Electric Scooter company, which sells electric bicycles, the demand for them in the world is constantly growing. For example, in the USA, in the first year of sales, about 250 thousand cars were purchased, and 1,5 million in the second year. According to forecasts, in seven to eight years, the annual volume of global sales of electric bicycles could reach $6-10 billion with prices ranging from $500 to $1 thousand per piece. The cost takes into account the “filling”: the motor-wheel, where the engine, batteries and electronic control unit are located.

Shkondin already had an almost completed model of a competitive bicycle - it was chosen as the first product that UM could start promoting. But first, a specific market had to be identified and the prototypes had to be developed to the point where the bicycle could be produced on an industrial scale.

According to Bowman, Flintstone Technologies and Russian Technologies found it logical to explore the market of any of the Asian countries, which, due to the prevalence of cycling, are called "two-wheeled economies." India met all the conditions. There are manufacturers of electrical devices in this country that could make motors, and many local companies that produce, according to Ian Woodcock, up to 10 million bicycles annually. And the demand for this transport is huge. According to the World Bank, the average annual income of an Indian is less than $480, which is equal to the cost of the cheapest model of an electric bicycle. Nevertheless, UM, Flintstone Technologies and Russian Technologies considered that the company's prospects in developing the market of this particular country, one of the poorest in the world, are enormous. Calculations have shown that the main drawback of the project – the small purchasing power of the local population – could be overcome. According to Igor Bogorodov, Director of UM management, the price of the Cycles UM electric bike with a Shkondin motor will be two times lower than that of foreign analogues.

Russian Technologies and Flintstone Technologies began to look for partners in India. According to Andrey Masalovich, an expert on international markets, president of the Inforus consortium, it is not easy to convince Indians to deal with a foreign product if they do not see a unique technological innovation in it. However, the funds and UM managed to interest Crompton Greaves, an Indian manufacturer of electrical products with an annual turnover of $2 billion.

In the summer of 2004, preliminary agreements were reached with Crompton Greaves. Then major bicycle dealers AvonCycles Private and TI Cycles of India agreed to cooperate with UM. The model with the Shkondin engine, proposed by UM, suited the Indians in all respects.

Many engines start to malfunction in India, where there is high humidity, dustiness, and the average air temperature reaches 50 ° C," says Shkondin. “In addition, as a rule, all foreign electric bicycles have an electronic control unit. If it breaks, the bike won't go at all. And our engine does not heat up, is not afraid of dust and moisture and works without external control."

The additional examination of the Shkondin engine, which was carried out by the Indians, took several more months, pushing back the launch of the project planned at UM for early 2005. But, according to Bowman, after the final protocol of intent signed with Crompton Greaves in early March, the date for the launch of bicycles on the mass Indian market became more certain. Cycles UM went on sale in the fall. And previously, as noted by Vasant Devayi, the general manager for the introduction of new products of TI Cycles, in early summer the company expects to launch a large-scale advertising campaign and release a trial batch of the model to see how customers react.

"We chose the UM motor model because we were convinced that it has environmental advantages over the rest and is much cheaper than them," says Devayi. “This can be a strong advantage when moving to other markets. We do not exclude that after a while TI Cycles will even start exporting products to China, where it will be able to compete with locally made bikes. After all, the potential of the Chinese market is huge, with more than 500 million people riding bicycles in this country."

Joe Bowman and Ian Woodcock say that the Indian market is only the beginning of UM's activities. The ultimate goal of Flintstone Technologies and Russian Technologies is, according to Joe Bowman, to bring UM to IPO while maximizing return on investment, which, according to calculations, should exceed costs by four to five times.

According to Woodcock, it is likely that UM's first public offering may take place on the London Stock Exchange. It is there that the shares of Hardide Ltd. will soon appear with an expected price of $230 million - one of the previous projects of Flintstone Technologies, launched in mid-2004 and based on innovative technologies in the chemical industry, also proposed by Russian scientists.

UM shareholders expect other company products to hit the market in a few years, which will significantly increase UM's IPO value.
UM also continued to improve motors for mountain bikes, wheelchairs, tricycles for the elderly, electric loading vehicles and other machines.

After a period of stable production of the first version of the Shkondin electric motors for the international market, a disagreements arose between the founders of the company and the project was terminated.

However, for Vasiliy Shkondin, this was a period of development of new technology and new opportunities. Thus, in 2019, a completely new generator motor-generator wheel was created, which has innovative technology.

This technology is completely different from the first version of the electric motor. The innovative technology of the motor-generator wheel allows you to get up to 96%, which means that its performance is significantly higher than that of any existing electric motor in the world.

Also, the uniqueness of the wheel generator motor is its structure, similar to a 12 piston engine. The 6 pistons work to give motion, and 6 pistons work to charge the battery back up, significantly increasing the range of travel.

The design allows you to create a motor-generator wheel without the need for maintenance. And also an important factor is the tuning system of the motor generator. That is, even if any other company builds the same engine, it will not be able to get the desired effect, without service settings, which only Vasiliy Shkodin has access to.
At the moment, this technology has been patented as a new motor-generator wheel and will enter the market together with X-World under the X-Auto brand.