Electric motorcycle maker Brammo gains momentum

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It’s been quite a week for Brammo Inc., the Oregon-based manufacturer of the Enertia electric motorcycle. Last Saturday, the company celebrated the opening of its first California sales outlet at the Best Buy store in El Segundo, where it held an event to unveil the for-sale version of its long-awaited product ‘and show people that it really existed,’ said Chief Executive Craig Bramscher, who days later flew to Washington after accepting an invitation to the White House.

Saturday also marked the conclusion of the Shocking Barack tour, a publicity stunt the company had choreographed to draw attention to its supermoto-style EV. For 12 days, two Enertia riders traced the 700-mile route of the Detroit CEOs who last year drove their hybrid vehicles to Washington to plead for bailout money, having been scolded for taking their private jets a couple of weeks earlier. The electricity cost for the Brammo trip was $4 per bike.

While Shocking Barack was intended to show ‘the current administration and hopefully the president himself ... that there is an electric vehicle you can buy right now,’ the tour wound up shocking Bramscher, whose company attracted so much attention with the tour that the CEO was invited to join more than 100 other leaders of the clean-energy economy at a White House forum Wednesday hosted by Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

‘Our whole goal is to get equal treatment from state and federal incentives because motorcycles are treated differently from cars,’ Bramscher said, a message he said he passed on to Chu. Right now, on-road electric motorcycles are eligible for two tax incentives -- a 10% tax credit on the purchase price up to a maximum of $2,500, and a rebate of the state sales tax for buying a new vehicle in 2009. In California, the tax rebates would reduce the Enertia’s $11,995 suggested retail price to about $9,700.

‘We think incentives should be based on the size of the battery pack because that’s the commodity that needs to get the cost down so more people go electric,’ Bramscher said. ‘If there’s a program manufacturers are eligible for, whether it’s a Department of Energy loan program to help support manufacturing facilities or grants for research and development, we’d love for some of that money to make it to Oregon or the West Coast, not just Michigan.’

To help make his case, Bramscher was able to not only meet with his state’s two U.S. senators -- Democrats Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley -- but also to actually let them swing a leg over. Bramscher said he met with 15 other legislators as well.

-- Susan Carpenter

of an Enertia electric motorcycle as Sen. Ron Wyden gets comfortable behind the handlebars. Credit: Brammo