Does Polaris Make Dirt Bikes

Minnesota-based power sports outfit Polaris is teaming up with Naught Motorcycles to co-develop electric vehicles, including ATVs and snowmobiles. The ii companies accept signed an "exclusive, 10-year understanding," which Polaris said volition help kick off an effort to have an electric version of every vehicle blazon the company offers by 2025.

Polaris makes a variety of off-road vehicles, including the popular RZR lineup too equally garish three-wheelers similar the Slingshot. It besides owns Indian Motorbike, which information technology acquired in 2011. California-based Naught, which was founded in 2006, currently has nine electric motorcycles in its product lineup, including the recently released SR/S. Both companies hope to seize upon what they recall has been an overlooked market for electrification, starting with off-route vehicles and snowmobiles.

Polaris CEO Scott Wine said the goal is to develop vehicles that are non merely bonny on their ain 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 production in power sports tin can buy it from us," Wine told The Verge, "though it's going to have us a while to get in that location."

Polaris has some expertise in electrification. In 2011, the visitor acquired Global Electrical Motorcars (GEM), which makes low-speed vehicles like golf game-carts and shuttles. Since then, Wine said Polaris has fabricated and sold "over a billion dollars" worth of electrical vehicles.

Merely by partnering with Zero, Polaris hopes to add new electrical vehicles to its core product line of off-route and ability sports vehicles. "With Zero every bit a partner over the next decade, we feel like we tin can take our entire portfolio and too offer an electric powertrain alternative that, in nigh cases, is a better solution for our customers than the internal combustion engine that it augments."

Zilch has been occasionally described as the "Tesla of motorcycles," and has established itself over the years as a top-tier maker of electric motorcycles. While seemingly dozens of wild-looking electrical motorcycles accept been announced over the last several years, very few of them are actually available for purchase, and basically none of them come up from a company with a reputation similar Zilch's.

Wine said that engineering science expertise, particularly when it comes to the motorcycle outfit's approach to batteries, was the main thing that attracted him to Zippo. "Their battery density is better than whatever automotive company," he said.

That said, battery-powered off-road vehicles aren't a guaranteed best-seller. Many of Polaris' customers are certain to be clashing, if not outright hostile, to the idea of an electric ATV, for case. Wine acknowledges that it will be challenging to convert some of his customers to bombardment-powered propulsion.

"I think information technology's gonna be very important to a lot of people," Wine said. "I as well think at that place's a lot of my electric current customers that don't give a crap."

Polaris isn't alone is exploring ways to sell more than electric power sports vehicles. Electric trucking company Nikola Motors has released concept versions of an electrical watercraft and an electric off-roader called the NZT. Tesla has too teased an electric ATV called the Cyberquad. And Volkswagen has revealed plans to make an electric dune buggy, the ID Buggy, which is based on the old Meyers Manx kits from the 1960s.

Polaris is a public company, while Nothing is nonetheless privately held. There has been a rash of electric vehicle companies going public these days using special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, to access more than capital while avoiding public scrutiny. Zero has been approached near going a similar route simply has then far declined, Wine said.

Meanwhile, Wine said that while an conquering past Polaris isn't on the table right at present, it could exist in the future. "I wouldn't rule annihilation out," he said. "I think they have aspirations to get public at some point and, you know, we remember we enhance their value so it's good for them in that regard."