Now I realize that this prediction is really tenuous, but bear with me for a moment. An article written my Fred Rau in his "Lost in America" column in the September issue of Friction Zone discusses the increasing popularity of motorcycle-based trikes and in particular the Can-Am Spyder reverse-trike range. Fred says that as many motorcycle enthusiasts keep getting older they are not feeling comfortable riding two-wheel motorcycles and are shifting to tikes in great numbers. (It should be noted that Fred Rau, in addition to being a long-time motorcycle industry journalist, is also a consultant to Can-Am and is assisting in the further development of their Spyder models.)
At the end of his long article, he says that the current popularity of three-wheeled vehicles is a major revolution within the industry and was neither planned nor expected by sales consultants - but it doesn't change the fact that it is happening. He goes on to predict that the rest of the industry can not be ignoring this market and he predicts that there will be other mass-produced "reverse-trikes" very soon - and he says you can "count on it". He then says that he "will go on a limb and predict that the first major player to jump on the bandwagon will be Polaris".
So what comes to my mind? Polaris invests in Brammo, we assume to get the latest on two-wheel EV technology. But a trike has a lot more room for packaging an electric propulsion system. Three wheels would be able to carry more weight than two wheels and that weight would not have to be balanced at stops the way a single-track vehicles needs to be. Plus, older folks still have lots of money to burn and don't typically need to ride as far as they used to do.
So my prediction, based upon all of these thin strings of facts, is that someday soon Polaris will come out with an electric three-wheel reverse-trike - in addition to a much more likely commercial electric off-road vehicle range.
