{"id":413,"date":"2025-02-11T17:01:12","date_gmt":"2025-02-11T17:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cleantechnica.com\/?p=243975"},"modified":"2025-02-11T17:01:12","modified_gmt":"2025-02-11T17:01:12","slug":"sam-bruneau-taiga-sxs-atvs-50-million-canadian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/green\/green-news\/sam-bruneau-taiga-sxs-atvs-50-million-canadian\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Bruneau, Taiga SxS ATVs, & $50 Million Canadian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, we covered Taiga Motors and the $50 million the company would be receiving from the Canadian government to build a first-of-its-kind<\/a>, vertically integrated factory in Quebec. This week, I was lucky enough to be able to catch up with Taiga\u2019s co-founder and CEO, Sam Bruneau, and talk about what that new factory is going to mean for Taiga, and for the powersports business as a whole.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is really a first for the powersports business, or e-powersports business,\u201d explains Sam, talking about Taiga\u2019s new factory. I\u2019m paraphrasing a bit from my notes, but it\u2019s the uniqueness of the company\u2019s plans for its factory that Sam worked to convey. \u201cIt is sort of a Tesla approach,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are making the battery packs, the IMS (controller), and assembling all of it under one roof. This gives us a lot of flexibility in developing the watercraft and the snowmobiles and, eventually, other products like side-by-side ATVs.\u201d<\/p>\n

I tried to stop him there, since I hadn\u2019t heard about any plans from Taiga to launch a side-by-side ATV to compete with Polaris. \u201cIt\u2019s the fastest growing powersports segment<\/a>,\u201d he explained. \u201cOf course we\u2019re looking into it.\u201d And that\u2019s kind of when it hit me: Sam Bruneau is like, a real dude<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I mean, he\u2019s obviously real \u2014 as in, non-fictional \u2014 but when I say \u201creal\u201d I mean that there is a genuineness to Bruneau\u2019s enthusiasm for outdoor powersports that is immediately engaging. \u201cCan I mention the side-by-side?\u201d I asked him, feeling like we were breaking some kind of story here. \u201cIf you want to,\u201d was his easy reply. Again, paraphrased, \u201cI don\u2019t think it is a big secret, and no one else is doing e-powersports like this, with no compromises. We started with snowmobiles and watercraft because it is the hardest segment to develop. From there, the rest is easier.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Image courtesy Taiga Motors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

We talked some more about the upcoming Taiga Orca personal watercraft<\/a>, and I made no attempts to hide the fact that I wanted one, badly. Bruneau seemed to like that, and we talked about some of the benefits of electric power on the water. \u201cThe instant torque is a benefit,\u201d he explained. \u201cBut also if you have one at a lake house and you want to go for an early ride, you\u2019re not waking up all the neighbors. No one wants to be that<\/em> guy, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

I am 100% that guy, and had no idea what he was talking about, but the quiet operation of his e-powersports products, combined with zero tailpipe emissions, meant that Taiga has products that can go places internal-combustion powered vehicles simply cannot go, and not just because of policies and rules.<\/p>\n

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Image courtesy Taiga Motors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWe are talking with several people in Europe about using the snowmobiles there,\u201d he explained \u2014 get this, as a rescue vehicle in treacherous conditions where an ICE (ha!) vehicle might cause an avalanche. It\u2019s kind of a sanity-check, right? Because I\u2019m trying to talk to this guy about 180 HP and mountains of torque in a ski and he\u2019s talking about seeing nature and saving lives, but just when I start to think we\u2019re not speaking the same language he drops right back into the performance aspects of what he\u2019s doing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is about no-compromise powersports,\u201d he says. \u201cThis is the Tesla approach, again. We are going for the high-end, the premium product. Why Taiga, as a product? It is a better experience. Better performance, ownership experience, more reliable, and there is a reduced impact on the environment, too. It is better in every way, also because it is electric.\u201d<\/p>\n

We also touched on Taiga\u2019s somewhat unique approach to sales, which speaks to the back and forth we\u2019ve been having on CleanTechnica<\/em> in recent weeks about direct sales models vs. the (not always the best experience) franchise dealers<\/a>. Taiga has an interesting approach here, doing their sales primarily online in a \u201cdirect\u201d way, but with final assembly, delivery, and the sale and installation of any aftermarket accessories happening at a local dealer level. \u201cIt is a hybrid,\u201d says Sam. \u201cWe think it is a win-win for the dealers, because they can make something from the sale, then they become the point of contact and give local customer support and service, but they don\u2019t have to carry expensive inventory or rely on \u2018end of the year\u2019 deals to clear out inventory they own. For them it can be a much better way to do business, and the customer gets exactly what they want.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, the customer gets what they want, eventually<\/em>. Taiga still hasn\u2019t delivered any units, but once the factory is up and running they expect turnaround time from order to delivery to be somewhere in the 3-4 weeks range.<\/p>\n

Original content from CleanTechnica<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Last week, we covered Taiga Motors and the $50 million the company would be receiving from the Canadian government to build a first-of-its-kind, vertically integrated factory in Quebec. This week, I was lucky enough to be able to catch up with Taiga\u2019s co-founder and CEO, Sam Bruneau, and talk about what that new factory is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3321,"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions\/3321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}