Electric motorcycle-maker Brammo Motorsports has made an interim move while it awaits completion of its new production facility.
Brammo owner Craig Bramscher has signed a three-year lease to occupy Tara Labs’ 18,000-square-foot building at 550 Clover Lane. Tara Labs, in turn, intends to lease Brammo’s former 10,000-square-foot facility at 695 Mistletoe Road, according to Coldwell Banker Commercial NW broker Tom Bradley, who represented Brammo in the deal.
Brammo is gearing up to begin production on its Enertia electric motorcycle and can’t wait until a new 40,000-square-foot plant is finished.
“It’s an interim solution and we hope to be operational by March 1,” Bramscher said Friday.
“If we were going to be in production so we can start shipping bikes by May, we needed more of a facility than we had. The existing facility was going to be a bit of a challenge, and this allows us to consolidate in one location.”
Brammo has doubled its workforce to 28 and will build up to “50 or so fairly quickly” as it gets ready to begin assembly. The first bikes will cost about $15,000 when they come off the line later this year. Subsequent versions are ticketed for $12,000.
“We’re still getting a lot of pre-orders,” he said. “That’s surprising since gas has gone down, but orders have stayed at a good clip.”
Once the production building is completed, Bramscher said the interim site likely would become an administrative office.
Bramscher is hoping Enertia buyers will qualify for a tax credit that was included in a Senate bill that was part of the stimulus package this week. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, introduced the measure to double to 500,000 the number of plug-in electric vehicles that could qualify for a tax credit of up to $7,500.
Bramscher anticipates Enertia buyers could qualify for a tax credit of between $1,250 and $4,000, based on battery size.
“That could be a feather in our cap,” he said.
Deceptively simple, the Enertia represents what’s achievable with the beauty of modern technology and some pretty smart engineers, rather than a blue sky promise based on technologies that are years off in the future. The Enertia benefits from an ultra light, ultra stiff carbon fiber monocoque chassis that doubles as the motorcycle’s battery “carriage” and an elegantly simple electric drivetrain that keeps maintenance at an absolute minimum
With a low moment of inertia and agressive rake angle, this motorcycle handles like a dream and has an affinity for changing direction. Couple that with the smooth, efficient power delivery from the electric drivetrain, and you’ve got a recipe for excitement. With 100% of it’s torque available from 0 rpm, the Enertia is certainly no slouch off the line. At it’s quickest setting, the Enertia will sprint from 0 to 30 mph in 3.8 seconds!
No related posts.