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Craig Bramscher

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Cummins is better known for its diesel truck engines, but the Fortune 500 company makes its money from also selling generators and alternative energy power sources.

So maybe, it shouldn’t come as a surprise then to learn today that Cummins has acquired Brammo, Inc. and its electric drivetrain business.

Before we should go further, we should point out that Polaris still owns Brammo’s motorcycle business, which it bought separately back in 2015, and that this purchase by Cummins applies only to the parts of Brammo that Polaris didn’t buy, including Brammo’s race bike, the Empulse RR.

The folks in Talent, Oregon have some exciting news today, as electric motorcycle manufacturer Brammo has announced a strategic partnership with TEAM Industries, a leading drivetrain technology firm. The partnership with TEAM brings a variety of advantages to Brammo’s production and design process, and it also sees TEAM becoming an investor in the electric vehicle startup.

TEAM’s ability to develop and produce, locally in the United States, will help Brammo not only develop its future products more effectively, but also help lower the cost of its current offering. Talking to Brammo CEO Craig Bramscher, he called TEAM Industries “American manufacturing at its finest,” and highlighted TEAM’s commitment to creating jobs throughout Minnesota, and its ability to work on a wide variety of manufacturing stages

Aside from the capital infusion, which is the lifeblood of any startup company, Brammo seems to be getting a wide array of benefits by working with TEAM.

It has long been rumored that Brammo, Inc. CEO Craig Bramscher envisions his company heading to Wall Street for an initial public offering one day, but now we are getting our first public words from Bramscher about how he hopes that his Oregonian company can go public in the next year or so.

Quoting remarks made at the Portland Business Journal Power Breakfast, the Sustainable Business Oregon is reporting that Bramscher is targeting late-2014 to mid-2015 for an IPO, with the figure of a $150 million being banded about as a fundraising goal from the public stock offering.

Brammo announced today that it has raised another $13 million, in a Series C funding round that was lead by Polaris Industries. Hoping to secure a total of $45 million over the course of the entire round of funding, the investment by Polaris is the second one that American company has made into the Ashland-based electric motorcycle company.

Polaris first invested in Brammo back in October, as the Minnesota-based company was rumored to be taking a close look at a number of electric motorcycle firms for a strategic partnership. Ultimately settling on Brammo, Polaris was a part of the Oregonian company’s $28 million Series B funding round, and is said to have lead this current Series C tranche.

Launching last night in downtown Los Angeles, the 2012 Brammo Empulse R & 2013 Brammo Empulse broke their cover and officially debuted. Right off the bat from the designations, you can see that Brammo intends for the Empulse R to be a 2012 model, with the base model Emuplse coming out next year (more on that further down). As we expected, the Brammo Empulse R got quite the price bump after its 22-month marination, and will be $18,995 MSRP. Meanwhile when the Brammo Empulse becomes available next year, it will have a slightly more palatable $16,995 price tag.

Featuring a six-speed gearbox the Brammo Empulse R comes with a 54hp motor, 10.2 kWh battery pack (9.31 kWh nominal), and a bevy of brand-name components like Marchesini wheels, Brembo brakes, Marzocchi forks, a Sachs rear shock, and a few carbon pieces (read the full technical specifications here). Getting a revised look, the basic Empulse design is still there with some subtle changes (some for the better, some of the worse, in our humble opinion). Touting 56 highway miles and 120 city miles, the Empulse is going to suffer from the same range-limiting use that other electric bikes on the market are facing, though Brammo has thought to include J1772 Level 2 capability on the bike, which should make for some more rapid charges away from the mothership. We like that.

Brammo has announced its acquisition of Quantyaparx, an electric dirt bike park concept that used to feature rival Quantya’s electric motorcycles. Renaming the venture to suit the company’s brand, BrammoParx will continue with the business model of providing a unique park-riding environment, which will now rent and Brammo’s upcoming dirt bike line comprised of the Brammo Engage & Brammo Encite. Currently available in Germany, Austria, Spain, Sweden, and the UK, Brammo hopes to franchise more locations in the coming months, including some in the United States.

Yesterday was a sunny day in the San Francisco/Bay Area, with weather in the mid-60’s. Just recently getting my bike back from a tune-up, I was itching for a ride and decided to pack things up early for the day, and go for a quick jaunt up to Thunderhill Raceway to gatecrash Brammo’s latest testing session with the Empulse RR electric race bike (close-up shots from Laguna Seca last year here).

Using my best ear-to-ear smile at the front gate, I rode into the paddock to see Brammo’s Director of Product Development Brian Wismann shaking his head upon my arrival, and muttering something about someone posting the session’s schedule online. Always a good-sport, Wismann graciously allowed me to stick around for the remaining day’s sessions, while Brammo’s CEO Craig Bramscher definitively removed me from his Christmas card list (you’ll still get a card from me though Craig).

Brammo Inc. filed the appropriate forms with the SEC yesterday stating that it has raised $12.4 million in Series B funds, in what is still an open round of financing. Brammo hopes to raise a total of $30 million in the Series B offering, with the use of funds likely going towards expanding Brammo’s reach into the Asian and European markets, as well as building out the company’s product line into other target segments.

Also in the Form D filing with the SEC we get a glimpse of the people behind the company’s management, which includes a presence from Brammo’s initial investors Best Buy & the clean-tech venture capital group Chrysalix, as well as Brammo’s CFO Bruce Gilpin. New to the ranks is David Kurtz from Alpine Inc., an oil and gas exploration and development firm that is leading the Series B round with another firm that is so far unknown.

It’s hard to make strategic business partnership announcements sound sexy. Between all the hyperbole about how two companies are going to shift the industry paradigm and synergize the supply chain matrix, the average consumer’s eyes glaze over, and drool starts seeping out from the corners of their mouths. So bear with us on this one, because the announcement (or is the term Brammouncement?) of Brammo and Flextronics is an important one not only for the Ashland based company, but also for the electric motorcycle industry as a whole.

Some of the biggest problems facing any startup in the motorcycle industry are distribution and assembly. With the demand for electric motorcycles being a global issue, electric motorcycle startups, which are based primarily in the United States, have to not only grow their businesses domestically, but perhaps more importantly they need to foster a presence abroad in foreign markets.

With Europe and Asia easily out-pacing the demand in the US for electric transportation, an issue of contention for cash-strapped startups like Brammo has been how to grow globally and effectively with their limited budgets. The solution in this case for Brammo, is partnering with Flextronics, and using their scalable global production facilities.

Although it didn’t take part in the e-Power electric race at Laguna Seca, the Brammo Empulse RR was on display in the Brammo pit area during the weekend, and we got a chance to lay our hands on the bike for the first time. Based off the Brammo Empulse street bike, the Empulse RR comes packed with 12.5 kWh of battery power (same as the MotoCzysz E1pc), which according to Brammo makes it the best bike in the paddock in terms of power-to-weight ratios.

Coming together in just eight weeks, the Brammo Empulse RR still has some kinks to iron out, as the bike apparently cooked off its liquid-cooled motor during testing. While the Brammo team figures out its foray into liquid-cooled electric motors (the Brammo Enertia uses an air-cooled motor), the rest of the Empulse RR package looks very promising.

Asphalt & Rubber took a lot of flak last month when we speculated about Brammo working on an electric sportbike. Armed with more than a hunch at the time, we have been told from multiple sources that Brammo is set to debut a TTR-based electric sportbike. For added measure, we’ve also been told that Brammo intends to race the bike, which we’d expect will have various configurations, at the e-Power Championship round at Laguna Seca later this month.