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It has long been rumored that Brammo, Inc. CEO Craig Bramscher envisions his company heading to Wall Street for an initial public offering one day, but now we are getting our first public words from Bramscher about how he hopes that his Oregonian company can go public in the next year or so.

Quoting remarks made at the Portland Business Journal Power Breakfast, the Sustainable Business Oregon is reporting that Bramscher is targeting late-2014 to mid-2015 for an IPO, with the figure of a $150 million being banded about as a fundraising goal from the public stock offering.

Every year, the electric motorcycle lineup from Zero Motorcycles grows up a little bit more, both in terms of product evolution and in terms of technology advancement.

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that for 2014 Zero Motorcycles once again has something for enthusiasts: the Zero SR, which builds off the company’s Zero S electric motorcycle, and features 67hp, 106 lbs•ft of torque, and a 102 mph top speed.

In addition to the turbocharged Suzuki Recursion concept, Suzuki has also teased its electric-powered EXTRIGGER concept ahead of the Tokyo Motor Show.

The pint-sized Suzuki EXTRIGGER draws some obvious cues from the Honda Grom and it seems impossible not to compare the two machines to each other — they even share a similar mission statement: “to give more people the chance to find out the fun of motorcycle.”

Suzuki has gone a step further than Honda though, with the EXTRIGGER sporting an electric drivetrain — borrowed from the Suzuki e-Let electric scooter . The choice is a well-thought-out one, as the limited range and power that is surely to be expected from a bike like the Grom fits in line with what a machine like the EXTRIGGER can offer a rider as well.

If you lookup the word “hustle” in the dictionary, you might see a portrait of the BRD Motorcycles crew. We haven’t heard much from the San Francisco startup in the past year or so, well nothing official at least, but today the BRD crew has a plethora of milestones to announce.

First up is the addition of $1 million in funding, which was lead by the strategic investment firm Third Shore Group (TSG). The added funds will help keep the BRD’s lights on, and help the EV company bring its RedShift electric motorcycle series into production. As a part of the funding agreement, BRD will also receive human resources from TSG, in addition to opening a satellite facility just outside of Detroit, in Royal Oak, Michigan.

Two years ago I lamented on the fact that Harley-Davidson didn’t have a model under 800cc, which among other things, left the company at odds with its efforts to push into the emerging Indian motorcycle market.

Six-months after I wrote that piece, there seemed to be some hope for the Bar & Shield brand, as rumors began to circulate about a 500cc class motorcycle that was being designed with emerging countries in mind. It would seem now, those rumors were true.

Confirming that Harley-Davidson would soon debut a 500cc class motorcycle for the Indian market, Harley-Davidson Motor Company Chief Operating Officer Matthew Levatich revealed last weekend that the Milwaukee-based company had a 500cc model in an advanced stage of development.

Hinting strongly that the machine would be built in India, and be aimed specifically at that market, Levatich also hedged his bets on the possibility of the model arriving on US soil.

Here’s some EV news for yah: Brammo has announced a guaranteed trade-in program for its electric motorcycle offerings, which basically says that if you buy a new Brammo motorcycle between now and the end of September 2013, the Ashland, Oregon company will guarantee that bike’s trade-in price (for another Brammo motorcycle of course) to be at the original MSRP for the next 12 months.

It seems Erik Buell Racing has been thinking about alternative-fuel vehicles, as the company from East Troy had filed and received a patent for a hybrid drive motorcycle design.

There is nothing particularly astonishing about EBR’s patent, after all with hybrids being all the rage in the four-wheeled world, it was obviously only a matter of time before that same trend transitioned to motorcycles as well.

However, what is interesting about Erik Buell Racing’s patent is that it doesn’t set forth the Prius-inspired setup that you would expect, where an electric motor takes over or assists an internal combustion engine.

Instead, EBR’s setup is more like the Chevy Volt, with a small petrol-fueled generator being on-board to charge the bike’s batteries once they have been depleted by the electric motor, and thus killing the range anxiety that is prevalent in current EV bike designs.

It’s been a while since we reported on the eRoadRacing World Cup series, the love child merger of the TTXGP and FIM e-Power electric motorcycle racing series, and that is for good reason.

While Asphalt & Rubber is a big proponent of the electric motorcycle uprising, and there are a lot of interesting things developing in this space (be sure read to our ride reviews of BRD RedShift SM, Mission RS, and MotoCzysz E1pc) the racing side of the equation has been rather lackluster.

So, it doesn’t surprise to hear that the FIM has cancelled the eRoadRacing event at Miller Motorsports Park, which was supposed to happen August 31st & September 1st.

Instead, the North American part of the eRoadRacing series will consist of only two rounds: last month’s Red Bull US Grand Prix at Laguna Seca, and this month’s Red Bull Indianapolis Grand Prix at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

July isn’t getting off to a great start for electric motorcycle manufacturer Brammo Inc, as the Ashland, Oregon company suffered a fire in the company’s R&D lab during the start of the month. The fire broke-out over the weekend of June 30th, as the EV company was doing extended testing to a lithium-ion battery pack.

Fortunately, Brammo’s automated sprinkler system was able to put out the blaze caused by the malfunctioning battery pack, but in the process caused roughly $200,000 in water-damage to equipment located in the facility.

Here at Asphalt & Rubber, we love the work of French designer Nicolas Petit — his Honda VTR1200 concept remains one of out all-time favorite concepts, and spurred me to think long and hard about the potential that the Japanese manufacturers could have in the two-wheel industry. Today’s post though, isn’t about a two-wheeler…it’s about a three-wheeler.

Pretty much the coolest trike we have ever seen imagined, Petit has once again inked a design for consumption, which features Bavaria’s favorite brand: BMW. Taking the 1.6L six-cylinder engine from the BMW K1600GT/GTL, Petit has mated a very recognizable front-end to his creation. The ultimate driving machine? We wouldn’t mind taking one for a spin around our local track.

It wasn’t the outright course record that we had hoped for, but Carlin Dunne set a superb 10’00.694 time up the mountain on his Lightning Motorcycles electric superbike, besting the top gas-bike time of the day, a 10’21.323 that was set by Bruno Langlois on his 1205cc class Ducati Multistrada 1200 S.

Setting the fastest time ever for an electric motorcycle up Pikes Peak, Dunne likely would have broken his own outright record had the PPIHC race course not been extremely green after two days of intermittent downpours.

Describing the course as having very little traction, compared to the earlier practice days, Dunne cited at least a dozen spots where he could have improved upon his time, but also acknowledged that one of those twelve areas likely would have been his stopping point for the day, as was the case for a bevy of other competitors.

The first major motorsport event to see an electric motorcycle out perform its gas counterparts, the 91st running of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb will surely be remembered as a turning-point for the historic race, and also for motorsport in general.