BRP’s Can-Am is going electric with the dual-sport Origin and street bike Pulse, but you won’t be able to buy one until 2024.
Can-Am has just announced its first new motorcycles in 35 years. The two new bikes, called Origin and Pulse, will be electric two-wheelers. With futuristic styling and a lack of the bulk you’d expect from a bike packing batteries instead of cylinders.
“Half a century ago, Can-Am roared to victory on the track and the trail,” says José Boisjoli, President and CEO of Can-Am parent company BRP. The bike builder was created in 1972 when Bombardier wanted to build high-performance motocross and endurance bikes.
First Can-Am Motorcycles in 35 Years
BRP dropped Can-Am in 1987. In 2006, the brand came back building quads, the three-wheel Spyder, and then later UTVs, the Ryker three-wheeler, and more. Now, electric motorcycles are getting added to the brand’s product mix.
Can-Am Origin Dual-Sport
The Can-Am Origin is the bigger of the two new electric bikes. A dual-purpose bike meant for performance off-road and on.
Can-Am talks about its Track n’ Trail roots and motorsports wins with this one. The company says it will offer a “more modern multi-terrain experience.”
Can-Am Pulse: City-Ready
The other new bike is the Can-Am Pulse. This is a city bike, for riders looking at powering up their commute while lowering running costs. And potentially making the ride less stressful, thanks to electric power instead of the heat and vibration of a gas engine.
Can-Am calls the Pulse “a balanced and agile motorcycle designed to immerse riders in the energy of the city and transform their daily commute into an electric joyride.”
Can-Am Electric Motorcycles
Both electric motorcycles will offer a high-performance LED headlight that Can-Am says will become a unique visual signature for the brand. The styling stands out with its simplicity and slab-sidedness. The color scheme manages to shout out electric as well without being overly bright.
The company points out the usual benefits of electric motorcycles, including easy riding thanks to the lack of a clutch or gear shift to select speeds. With an e-moto, it’s as simple as twist and go.
Both Pulse and Origin will offer Level 2 charging, with the ability to charge more quickly than a standard wall outlet, but that little detail highlights what’s missing from the Can-Am electric lineup.
Long Wait for More Info
While it is announcing and showing us the two models now, the full specs are an entire year away. The pair will use Rotax E-power, BRP’s electric motor system, but that’s about all of the detail we get until August 2023.
Nothing about power or torque, other than saying it will be instant and capable of highway speeds. We’ll need to wait. Even confirming Level 2 EV charging can mean a wide range of speeds. It’s also a far cry from the speeds of Level 3 DC fast charging most EV cars — and Harley-Davidson’s LiveWire electric motorcycle — offer that can turn charging from hours into minutes.
Once we have the full specs, it will be another year before the Can-Am Origin and Pulse will be available to buy. BRP says to expect that they’ll be available in mid-2024, making this a very early announcement.
Why So Early?
These early announcements are becoming increasingly common for electric vehicles of all types. We’re not exactly sure why, but 2 to 3 years of lead time is the new norm. If this were a startup company, we’d think that meant the motorcycles were little more than vaporware — vehicles that looked good but would never exist.
With BRP, though, we’re more confident that the bikes will make it to production. The company has had strong revenues and stock prices, and is more than capable of building bikes.
Last year, BRP committed to investing $300 million over 5 years to electrify its existing product lines by 2026. A 2019 acquisition of EV tech from defunct electric motorcycle manufacturer Alta Motors came just ahead of BRP launching electric go-karts.
So, it seems more like BRP trying to keep us interested and get its name into the electric motorcycle headspace early. Expect more between now and the full spec announcement in 2023, because BRP and Can-Am will need to work to keep the Origin and Pulse in that collective headspace in the meantime.
