Hong Kong’s Water Supplies Department will use the Enertia Plus, while the Hong Kong police department will use the 2012 Enertia Plus “LE,” or the Law Enforcement edition, which has features for police. Brammo’s exclusive dealer in Hong Kong is JCAM Advanced Mobility Company.

I’m not sure how many electric motorcycles the deal entails, but I’ve asked the company and will update this when I know more. It’s gotta be sizable, particularly for Brammo, which is a small company based in Ashland, Ore.

Two-wheeled EVs in China

The electric vehicle market is being driven by sales of electric scooters, motorcycles, and e-bikes sold in China, as the Chinese government has banned gas-powered motorcycles in some places. According to Lux Research, sales of batteries for electric bikes and scooters will grow from being a $6.4 billion market in 2010 to a $10.9 billion market in 2015 (11 percent growth), led by the Chinese market. According to some statistics the market for electric motorcycles in China is expected to grow 11 percent per year through 2014 to 31.6 million units.

All the electric motorcycle, and scooter startups are angling for deals like this one, including firms like Mission Motors, Vectrix, Zero Motorcycles, and KLD Energy. Focusing on the U.S. market alone isn’t enough for these companies.

Brammo’s plans

Just last week Brammo announced it has raised another $28 million, and no doubt securing that funding had something to do with this deal. The funding was led by Polaris Industries, which makes sporting vehicles like ATVs and snowmobiles. Brammo is also backed by Alpine Energy; NorthPort Investments; the venture arm of Best Buy, Best Buy Capital; and Canadian investment firm Chrysalix.

The Enertia electric motorcycle has a 60–70 mph max speed, 40-mile range and roughly $8,000 price tag. But Brammo has been planning on building higher-end bikes, including its Empulse, which has a new battery pack, a power management system and a water-cooled motor. The Empulse has a 100-mph top speed, an average range of 60 miles per charge and an estimated starting price of $9,995.

Brammo is also building four new, 6-speed models that are using a transmission system that enables higher speeds and the equivalent of the performance of a traditional gas-based motorcycle. The transmission tech — called the Integrated Electric Transmission (IET) — will come from partner SMRE Engineering, and the prices for these motorcycles clock in around $10,000 to $12,000.

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Yep, those two-wheelers that look so fun to ride and are starting to be embraced in China. While car many companies, startups and investors are focused on battery technology for the next-generation of electric cars, Lux Research analyst Jacob Grose, says “e-bikes and scooters will drive the biggest growth for these batteries in the next five years.”

The total market for batteries, supercapacitors and fuel cells for both transportation and the smart grid will grow from $21.4 billion in 2010 to $44.4 billion in 2015, says Lux. During that time electric bikes, or e-bikes, and scooter batteries will grow from being a $6.4 billion market in 2010 to a $10.9 billion market in 2015 (11 percent growth).

In China in the short term lead-acid battery technology will make up 93 percent of scooter and e-bike battery sales, says Lux. But lithium-ion battery technology for e-bikes will actually grow three times faster than lead acid, growing 22 percent through 2015, just from a much smaller base.

Perhaps the growth projections mean life will soon get better for the e-bike and electric scooter startups. Companies like Vectrix have struggled with profitability, but are now getting a helping hand from China’s battery firms.

The co-founder and CEO of electric vehicle maker Mission Motors, Forrest North, told us he thinks the market is now ripe for a higher-performance (and higher price tag) electric scooter technology.

Image courtesy of Mission Motors.

Kim told us in an interview today that Vectrix, which will officially relaunch at an international dealer expo on Friday, has formed a “very light” management team and “secured the original engineering team” over the last month or so. Now the plan is to rebuild relationships with a network of uneasy dealers — helping them move remaining inventory of Vectrix’s high-end VX-1 scooters — and get cracking on new models and markets.

As of July 2009, when reports first emerged that Vectrix was headed for bankruptcy, the company had sold only 2,000 of its $11,000, Poland-made VX-1 scooters, although it had plans to market “two lower-end models costing as little as $5,100.”

Now headquartered in New Bedford, Mass. (in the same business park where the old Rhode Island-based Vectrix had operations), the newly relaunched firm expects to develop a handful of new vehicles over the next several years, including more affordable models for consumers in the U.S. and internationally, Kim said, while continuing to offer the VX-1. Already, the new Vectrix has started shipping “spare parts and finished products to its customers,” according to a release from the company earlier this week.

Late last year, Hesketh Motorcycles announced it had struck a deal with New Vectrix to sell its VX-1 under the Hesketh brand in the UK, but since this happened before the latest incarnation of the company took control, Kim said the arrangement is now being “looked into.”

Kim described the VX-1 as “the Vectrix core.” As the company works to expand into fleet markets with lower-priced vehicles, he said “some of that tech will move over to fleet models.” A three-wheeled model could be a strong possibility for fleet applications, said Kim, because “it doesn’t necessarily need a motorcycle license. It’s easier to adopt.” Offering a lower priced model to fleet operators, who often give more weight to long-term operating costs than a typical consumer, and who (in the case of many public fleets) are looking to transition over to electric vehicles — that, too, could help ease adoption for Vectrix models.

Photo credit Flickr user Sonietta46

The speed might be record-breaking, but the strategy echoes the one employed by electric scooter maker Vectrix — until it hit the skids this year amid “very disappointing sales” for its 70 MPH, $11,000 scooter, “challenging market conditions” and 13 years in the biz without a profit. Mission Motors co-founder and CEO Forrest North, however, thinks the market is now ripe for his 16-person startup, based in San Francisco, to find success with the strategy using a significantly higher-performance technology and an even higher price tag: $68,000.

As Edmunds Green Car Advisor put it this summer, Vectrix was partly “a victim of the ‘good idea a little too soon’ syndrome.’” Mission Motors, backed by angel investors, has come onto the scene more than a decade later, and so far it’s going like gangbusters.

In just the last year, North says the motorcycle industry has shifted from having large manufacturers generally disinterested in the startup’s plug-in technology, to many of them now calling up Mission Motors because they’re in a rush to develop electric models (Honda, Yamaha, Piaggio and others have announced plans to launch electric scooters or motorcycles), and they increasingly “see value in working with a startup” that’s nimble and “technologically focused.”

Of course, heightened interest in Mission Motors may have something to do with the unveiling of its Mission One prototype at the 2009 TED Conference in February, but North noted, “Building up the technology internally will take them much longer.”

Just look at Tesla, said North — a former Tesla engineer: When the electric car maker launched a few years ago, it might have seemed impossible for Tesla to compete with the resources of a major automaker like Mercedes-Benz, part of Daimler AG. Fast-forward to today, and Daimler has invested $50 million in Tesla to use its battery pack tech and get an electric model to market as soon as possible, while the U.S. government has stepped in to help the startup realize those mass market goals.

Others in the industry see Vectrix’s financial troubles as an illustration of something other than bad timing, however. According to Rob Ferber, CTO of KLD Energy Technologies and Tesla’s former science director, the luxury electric motorcycle market that Mission Motors is eying as a stepping stone to the mainstream may simply be smaller than the market Tesla tapped with its $109,000 Roadster — too small, perhaps, to support a viable business at this point.

As the market develops, Ferber expects some of the earliest opportunities to arise in markets with lower performance and warranty expectations (that’s where KLD is hoping to grab a foothold with scooters starting at $3,288), allowing startups to go through a few iterations of their technology without disappointing customers or smudging their reputation.

Mission Motors is already working on a second model meant to be more competitive with gas-powered motorcycles, although North said customers will still pay a premium for the second-gen technology. But the startup is setting a high standard straight out of the gate. North said the company remains on track to sell 300 Mission One motorcycles in the 2010 model year, including 50 Premier Limited Edition models that are now open for reservation. While he declined to give numbers, he said some slots remain open and the company is about to launch a sales effort. As for the issue of financing, North said Mission Motors needs to raise less than $30 million over the next 3-5 years, and it has “really strong interest” now in pre-Series A discussions.

If the growing field of companies working like Mission Motors on electric two-wheelers in Vectrix’s wake can make the economics work, North said it could be a boon for electric mobility at large. “I don’t think we’re going to have (mass market) electric vehicles unless we have a really clear, profitable company. It looks much more possible for a smaller company to do that profitably,” he said, because of their ability to “maneuver on the edge of the technology more effectively.”

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What happened? AutoblogGreen has posted a Vectrix press release (dated July 14) downloaded from the startup’s site before it shut down, and it paints the whole gloomy picture. Noting “challenging market conditions for some time as a result of the credit crunch and lack of consumer spending on bigger ticket retail purchases,” Vectrix says it has seen “very disappointing” sales and been unable to secure financing over the last several months.

According to the Providence Journal, which broke the story, Rhode Island-based Vectrix has sold only 2,000 of the $11,000, Poland-made Maxi scooters, although it had plans to market “two lower-end models costing as little as $5,100.” Vectrix, which the Journal says never turned a profit, had some 200 workers and 225 dealerships at its peak.

At this point, the startup has laid off most of its team (at least 20), as it pursues “strategic options including the sale of the Company.” If that doesn’t pan out within 30 days, Plan B is for Vectrix (“a victim,” as Edmunds Green Car Advisor puts it, “of the ‘good idea a little too soon’ syndrome”) to file for bankruptcy.

Vectrix, having ventured into the business of electric two-wheel scooters 13 years ago, will leave behind it (if it does go kaput) a much fatter field of electric vehicles designed as alternatives to the standard four-wheeled car than when it started — including VentureOne from Venture Vehicles, Aptera’s Typ-1, Brammo’s Enertia and Mission Motors’ planned Mission One. Here’s hoping we don’t have to start another deathwatch.

Photo credit Flickr user Sonietta46

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