ElectricMotorcycleForum.com
Makes And Models => Brammo Forum => Topic started by: SopFu on January 16, 2015, 05:37:58 AM
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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
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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. :)
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The release is here, with a little more info:
http://insideevs.com/polaris-buys-electric-motorcycle-brammo/ (http://insideevs.com/polaris-buys-electric-motorcycle-brammo/)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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. :)
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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
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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 (http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1096364_brammo-electric-motorcycle-company-bought-out-by-polaris)
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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. :o 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. ;)
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http://www.iet-technology.com/iet-foto-gallery.php (http://www.iet-technology.com/iet-foto-gallery.php):o
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;)
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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 (http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-polaris-buys-brammo-20150116-story.html)
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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!
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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 (http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-polaris-buys-brammo-20150116-story.html)
Brammo still has "existing inventory" after their "fire sale"? What has been going on with that company? ???
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So since Honda puts fake cooling fins and air cleaners on their cruisers, is Polaris going to put fake exhaust pipes on theirs?
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So since Honda puts fake cooling fins and air cleaners on their cruisers, is Polaris going to put fake exhaust pipes on theirs?
Only time will tell. In the meantime, here is another article with more speculation about Polaris's future plans. Let the good times roll (opps, wrong motto for this moto ::) ). http://www.autoblog.com/2015/01/22/polaris-buys-brammo-electric-motorcycles/ (http://www.autoblog.com/2015/01/22/polaris-buys-brammo-electric-motorcycles/)
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For sure it's a good news for Brammo, more financial stability.
But what about the dealers ? Do they have to sell Victory bikes ?
Fo example, we sell HD and Triumph, the hardest competitors of Victory. But on the other hand, we are the seller number 1 in Paris. Strange situation ^^
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According to an article in the April issue of Motorcyclist magazine, regarding the sale of Brammo motorcycle production to Polaris, Richard Walker, CEO of Zero Motorcycles, is quoted as follows:
"We're happy to have Polaris bolster Brammo. We think Polaris' interest validates the electric-motorcycle market, and we welcome the competition."
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The March issue of Motorcycle Consumer News, contains an interesting 4-page article, starting on page 26, regarding the chief designer of the Polaris Indian Scout and how he designed the motorcycle. The fellow's name is Rich Christoph and he spent several years working for H-D on their recent Sportster series of retro bikes, before moving to Polaris in 2011 to work on the Scout. I found this quote by Christoph fascinating:
"At Polaris you feel not only are the right people making decisions, but the right decisions get made, and they get made fast. At Harley, decision-making descended into a quagmire of meeting after meeting, then training on how to have a meeting followed by meetings on the training. At Polaris, everyone gets in a room, the drawings go up on the wall, everyone discusses it, has their say and then a decision is made. And you move on, Polaris schedules are so aggressive and the environment so fast-paced, you just don't have time to hesitate and wait - we have to move."
It sounds like a fun place to work. And Polaris sounds like a company that gets things done. I really think they are going to love working on the Brammo electric motorcycles and we are going to love seeing what they can do with the technology. :)
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At Harley, decision-making descended into a quagmire of meeting after meeting, then training on how to have a meeting followed by meetings on the training.
Too many managers syndrome.
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Polaris has exactly what Brammo needs : an experience for selling & servicing niche vehicle. It is a great fit. And what is even better is that it is a listed company (different from Zero) : if you think there is a bright future for electric two wheelers, you now have a stock to buy !
Great move !