INTERVIEW
PRESIDENT OF MOTORCYCLES AT POLARIS INDUSTRIES INC., STEVE MENNETO
P120
Okay, but when you pur-
chased Brammo in January
2015 as your ready-made
electric motorcycle brand, that
time you did then rebadge this
as a Victory. How many Victory
electric bikes have you sold
since then?
To be perfectly honest, less
than 100 bikes so far.
So now that Victory is gone,
are you going to continue with
electric motorcycles at all?
Yes, indeed we will. We can
see a lot of future opportunity for
electric motorcycles as battery
technology continues to move
forward. So if you're asking if we'll
just take the Victory Impulse and
turn it into the Indian Impulse, the
answer is, no. We'll actually have
an Indian on-road electric bike
within the next five years, with
powertrain characteristics more
applicable to leisure riding than
commuting. And it will be priced
competitively.
So what you're essentially
saying is that in the short
term, Brammo models were
rebadged as Victorys with a
small amount of Polaris input,
but with the death of the Vic-
tory brand you'll terminate that
program, and work instead
on bringing an all-new Polaris-
developed electric platform to
the marketplace as an Indian
E-motorcycle within the next
five years?
Correct.
What are your other strategic
plans for Indian into the future?
Indian finished 2016 up more
than 25% year-on-year in retail
sales. So we're really excited
about where we are with the
Indian brand, and we're optimistic
about what we have coming up
in 2017, with several exciting new
bikes, new dealerships and so
forth. With only nine models out
there at present, we feel we still
have a lot of strategic opportuni-
ties in front of us as we continue to
look for aggressive expansion with
high double-digit growth, and we
come close to doubling the Indian
The Indian range will near-double
in size within the next five years,
while expanding its spread of
models to include more modern,
sportier products.
