Over the years, Minnesota-based company Polaris (NYSE: PII) has become synonymous with Powersports, developing a variety of off-road vehicles, including the popular RZR lineup. The popular Powersports outfit is now teaming up with Zero Motorcycles, a Santa-Cruz based maker of electronic motorcycles and powertrains to electrify its lineup. On Tuesday, the two companies announced a 10-year agreement to work together to produce electrified off-road vehicles and snowmobiles.
Zero will provide the powertrain technology, hardware, and software while Polaris will develop, manufacture, and sell the vehicles. According to Zero Motorcycles CEO Sam Paschel, the companies will co-develop the technologies and vehicle platforms for this new generation of electrified Powersports with the aim of dramatically expanding the electric options currently on the market.
“Our EV expertise and millions of miles real-world, rubber-meets-the-road EV experience, coupled with Polaris’ broad product portfolio, scale, supply chain, and market leadership, makes this a game-changer for every Powersports enthusiast.”
Although Zero is renowned in the electric motorcycle space as the Tesla of motorcycles, Polaris won’t start selling Zero motorcycles at its dealerships. The partnership will initially be focused on electrifying all the products in the Polaris lineup including their market-leading side-by-side four-wheelers as well as snowmobiles. Polaris CEO Scott Wine says that the goal is to develop vehicles that are not only attractive on their own merits, but actually superior to their combustion engine counterparts.
“The vision that I have is that any customer that wants to buy an electric powertrain product in power sports can buy it from us,” he says, admitting that “it’s going to take us a while to get there.” The Powersports outfit has had some experience with electrification before: in 2011, Polaris acquired Global Electric Motorcars (“GEM”), which makes low-speed vehicles like golf-carts and shuttles. The firm has made and sold “over a billion dollars” worth of electric vehicles.
By partnering with Zero, Wine says, Polaris hopes to add new electric vehicles to its core line of off-road and power sports vehicles. “With Zero as a partner over the next decade, we feel like we can take our entire portfolio and also offer an electric powertrain alternative that, in most cases, is a better solution for our customers than the internal combustion engine that it augments.”
Zero’s engineering expertise, as well as its approach to batteries, was the main thing that attracted him to the motorcycle outfit. “Their battery density is better than any automotive company.”
It would be enlightening to hear what entities like Net Element (NASDAQ: NETE) have to say about the likelihood of the Polaris-Zero Motorcycles partnership being a game changer regarding the electrification of two and three wheelers.
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