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[SopFu]

I'm kinda sad     

Dear Sopfu,

We are pleased to share with you another exciting chapter in the Brammo story. As you will read in today’s press release. Polaris Industries, a long standing strategic partner and investor in Brammo, has acquired our electric motorcycle business. We will be writing to you in the near future with more details about what this exciting development means for you.

Please be assured that all existing warranty and service obligations relating to your Brammo motorcycle will continue to be honored.

Thank you for being a Brammo customer, we truly appreciate your faith in us and the products we create. Without you this next chapter would not have been possible.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact  customer@brammo.com

Best Wishes
Team Brammo

[Richard230]

I think this will be a good thing for Brammo owners.  Now you are pretty much assured of well-funded support and seeing Brammo products continuing to advance in design, performance, stability, quality control and getting into the mainstream, together with Polaris's Victory and Indian brands.   

[teddillard]

The release is here, with a little more info:
http://insideevs.com/polaris-buys-electric-motorcycle-brammo/

[SopFu]

I know it's great for me as an Empulse owner, but I was really hoping for Brammo to lead the way rather than get sucked into a bureaucracy. It'll be interesting to see where this goes.

[WindRider]

This means that Polaris/Brammo dealers will soon be the largest sales/service organization for electric motorcycles in the US and a lot of other countries.

I think this a great thing for electric motorcycles.   Brammo always had excellent engineering and poor Sales so it makes more sense that Brammo just focus on engineering and drivetrain and Polaris already has the sales/dealer network in place and has a lot to offer in terms of motorcycle engineering and volume production and buying power.

My 2 cents from the peanut gallery.

[JohnFind]

My guess is they're DOA. I visited the factory twice, this past year, even met with Craig. There's been no development activity for over a year.

[peter]

Wow. No suggestion that JohnFind's forum-fu is too weak for his statement.

No-one's chiming in with a quote from an anonymous industry insider to tell us it's complete BS? 

Peter

[Richard230]

I talked to Craig for about 20 minutes at a race track three years ago. Even then, it seemed to me that he really wasn't interested in manufacturing motorcycles, he just liked developing electric vehicles and seeing how they would perform on the race track.  He kept saying that all he wanted to do was have fun and was having the time of his life at the track.  When I tried to corner him about the nuts and bolts of building vehicles, he didn't seem all that interested in the subject.  So none what is happening really surprises me.

I still think that Brammo had (or has) some very smart and talented engineers and I really like how the Empulse finally ended up after three years of steady development and testing.  I still think it is basically a better motorcycle than the Zero , but Brammo was really constrained by the owner - in my opinion.  I really think that the Empulse and its successors will have a bright future with Polaris at the helm.   

[Richard230]

Rideapart picked up the story, but you won't find out anything new in their quickie article.

https://rideapart.com/articles/polaris-buys-brammo-motorcycles?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HellForLeather+%28Hell+For+Leather%29

[benswing]

It took a while for my editor to get my article up, but it is now live.  Looking forward to seeing an electric Victory motorcycle, but I'm not holding my breath.  Hopefully Brammo's experience will help make it happen sooner rather than later.

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1096364_brammo-electric-motorcycle-company-bought-out-by-polaris

[Richard230]

That is an interesting article, Benswing.  Still, I will be surprised if Polaris makes a Victory electric cruiser.  I just don't think that the market is ready for a silent cruiser without an exhaust system.     But I guess we will see eventually and I do think that it is smart for Polaris to take the EV marketing leap, while H-D is still trying to figure out what to do with their LiveWire project.

I am also interested in seeing how the major monthly magazines will handle this story.  They usually have some pretty good connections with the big manufacturers and their speculation on what comes next might be worth reading.  The bigger they are, the more they leak.   

[chdfarl]

http://www.iet-technology.com/iet-foto-gallery.php

[chdfarl]

 

[benswing]

Scott Wine, CEO of Polaris apparently hinted that future electric motorcycles will be a different style.  Whether that is a cruiser or not is yet to be seen. 

"Wine hinted that while existing inventory of the Oregon company's motorcycles will certainly be sold, future product will look a lot more like Victory and Indian and less like Brammo." 
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-polaris-buys-brammo-20150116-story.html

[ultrarnr]

I am not a fan of cruisers but I would love to see what Polaris could do with an electric cruiser. Especially if they made it a full size bike. Take the Brutus V9 for example. You can get it with a 33.7 kWh battery that gives you 210 mile highway range and a 280 mile city range. Set it up with a DCFC system and you have something you could seriously travel with. Let's see a Victory or Indian version of the V9!