Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1035029
VOL. 55 ISSUE 39 OCTOBER 2, 2018 P101 Brammo outright in January 2015, but would it be fair to say that project has short-circuited? The electric side with Brammo was a great learn- ing experience, that's how we look at it—we really did learn a lot. But with Indian having Polaris as a parent, we are able to leverage our parent com- pany's expertise in working with electric off-road vehicles and other applications. Polaris has two subsidiary companies manu- facturing electric vehicles, doesn't it? Correct, GEM and Goupil. So in order to continue that learning, we'll access their expertise before coming to market at some point in the future with an electric Indian. But we're not in a rush to do that before getting practical benefits from what we've learned. However, look at our timing—we acquired Indian in April of 2011, and we brought an all-new mo- torcycle to market barely two years later. Today, we're only four years on from when we re-launched the Indian brand in Sturgis back on August 3 of 2013. I always remind folks about this, because it's been such a short while—we're only four model years in from re-establishing Indian from ground zero, so we've come a huge long way in a short time. We've gotten 450 new dealers in 45 different countries in four years. We've launched 15 models, three different platforms, and we had to re- start a brand. So we think that when the timing's right, electric could be part of that portfolio. Does the fact that Harley-Davidson is appar- ently going to bring its LiveWire EV to market put any pressure on you to produce an Indian rival? No, not at all. We have no particular time sched- ule on our EV project. Another thing Harley-Davidson has done is to establish a manufacturing operation in India, with another coming online soon in Thailand. Is Indian considering manufacturing offshore? Po- laris has plants in Poland and Mexico, so it's something your parent company has already decided to do. We continue to look at that as an opportunity for us. Honestly, it starts with the customers first, and then our dealer base, and then how we look at it in light of that. Right now, you could say that where we're at in the life cycle of our brand, we don't necessarily need to produce all of our stuff in Spirit Lake, Iowa. So we're assessing that opportunity as we grow. The issue will be, is speed to market going to be critical in the future, and personalization or customization for a given market, and so on? We want to grow our brand globally, but we know that when customers around the world demand some- thing we're not making in America, then we need to be able to respond to that. So if it starts to makes sense for our brand to produce around the world, as well as in the USA, then we'll assess that, and make sure we make the right decision. But we're not pressured by the tariff issues that have raised their heads to do anything right now. That's the big question. The EU has retali- ated to President Trump hiking tariffs on its steel products by increasing taxation on U.S.-made motorcycles from 8% to 31%. Har- ley-Davidson has responded by saying that they'll be manufacturing in greater numbers offshore. What's Indian's response to the EU's tariff hike, which I understand will cost you as much as $40 million this year alone? Right now, we're still assessing how that's really going to impact our business. Let's fully un- derstand what's going on, how it's going to affect us, how long is it going to be there, what's truly going to happen? As I just said, we're growing, we're going to continue to grow, and we're up A big success for Indian has been its success on the track.