MEDFORD,
Ore. (AP) — The drive to become the world's top electric motorcycle
maker has led Craig Bramscher around the globe — up twisting roads,
off-road and face-to-face with corporate heads who share belief in the
future of Brammo Motorsports' Enertia and Empulse.
It's also made those closest to him question his sanity at times.
In
the days after Bramscher decided to develop and build electric
motorcycles in Southern Oregon, he shared his vision with his wife. Jennifer Bramscher
nodded and smiled reassuringly. Much later and millions of dollars down
the road, she admitted what she really thought of the venture.
"She recently told some friends that she thought it was insane," Bramscher said.
At
that point, Brammo had the American license to manufacture the Ariel
Atom, a light-weight, high-speed, gas-powered automobile, and electric
automaker Tesla had yet to debut its pricey products.
"Here
we were with one of the fastest cars in the world and we were going to
develop a relatively low-speed, battery-powered vehicle," he said. "Like
everyone else, she thought motorcycles were supposed to make noise. She
didn't tell me what she thought and let me pursue it.
"Once we got going she told me, 'You actually have a pretty good vision of the future.' I went from heel to hero."
Enertia
models are now in production in Hungary, while the Empulse is going
through final tweaks before assembly begins in July and production ramps
up in August.
That should boost the company's Ashland employee count from 55 to 75 by year's end.
The
journey has been anything but a straight shot, veering all over the
globe as innovations and changing market conditions scrapped
incumbent plans.
"We like disruptive ideas," Bramscher said. "They may not all work exactly the way we planned, but we learn so much each time."
There's an inside joke at Brammo's Clover Lane headquarters born of the company's pragmatic flexibility.
"Whenever
we make a strong statement of what we are not going to do, everyone
assumes we're going to get there very soon," Bramscher said. "You tell
engineers something is not possible, they come back in a couple weeks
and say here it is."
Batteries weren't on Bramscher's radar. After all, there were plenty of major players in the field.
"We
said we would never build our own batteries. It was too
research-intensive and too competitive," Bramscher said. "Clearly, there
were billions of dollars invested in battery technology, why would we
do that?"
It
soon became apparent those billions of research dollars were targeted
for automobiles. Promises of batteries with a higher energy density and
lower costs failed to materialize. It turned out the battery packs
Brammo developed for testing bikes in races on both sides of the
Atlantic were a step or two ahead of what anyone else was making.
"We
had developed the batteries specifically for racing — never with the
intent of bringing them into production," he said. "But once we started,
we saw that was what differentiates us from other bikes."
Likewise, Brammo didn't plan on engineering a gearbox into its bikes.
"Everyone
talked about how we didn't need a gear box because electric motors had
more torque and RPMs available," Bramscher said. "We believed it, too,
and in many cases it's probably true."
But
widespread efforts had proven a multiple-speed gear box provides early
acceleration and high-speed performance. Brammo's Empulse has a 6-speed
gear box.
"Doing
the math, we found it would improve motorcyclists' control over the
bike and give more regenerative braking (charging the battery while
applying the brakes)."
After 2 1/2 years of development, Brammo has just brought the gear box into production, Bramscher said.
"At first, not everyone on our team liked it until we realized we had a good thing here," he said.
