Pretty much a 30-40% price cut across the board. EU price cuts are a little bit larger even, though only the 2014 bike is available. The 2013 Enertia Plus in the US also got a significant price cut, dropping it below the price of the Enertia Classic.
Pricing in the EU is before VAT, but this brings it very close to pricing parity for comparable gas bikes.
Consider pricing in Germany.
2014 Empulse €7,995 + 19% VAT = €9,514
2014 Triumph Street Triple ABS incl VAT = €8,440
2014 Ducati Monster 696 incl VAT = €8,790
Some thoughts:
1. This will swing many potential buyers that were undecided but serious, and pull forward a lot of purchasing decisions. Great for Brammo in the short term - they'll sell every bike they have already built. The primary goal might be to clear inventory, as I suspect the 2009 Enertia price cuts were intended.
2. Brammo's future sales are going to be hurt, if they simply introduce a 2015 Empulse with small tweaks at the original $16995 / $18995 pricing. Either Brammo will need to institutionalize some portion of the price cuts or introduce a significantly different new product in the future (RR, for example). Maybe a 2015 bike with ABS and 6 kW onboard charging would be sufficiently different.
Consider the price cuts to the original iPhone. Apple
introduced the iPhone in January 2007 at $499 (4GB) and $599 (8GB), carrier-subsidized pricing. The phone was available in July 2007, and in September 2007 Apple dropped the 4GB model and
cut prices on the 8GB model to $399 (again, subsidized).
Early buyers were not pleased - perhaps unreasonably so. Apple
quickly extended a $100 credit to early buyers.
In June 2008 Apple
introduced the iPhone 3G at new [subsidized] price points: $199 (8GB) and $299 (16GB).
I'm not sure Brammo can institutionalize the price cuts for the Empulse going forward. I vaguely recall a Brammo employee (who shall remain nameless
) saying there wasn't a ton of profit on the Empulse at launch. It's likely that the assembly process has been refined in the ~20 months the Empulse has been on sale, and Brammo may have been able to negotiate better pricing arrangements with its component suppliers. So we'll see.
3. Zero's pricing edge is gone. Even comparing only 2014 bikes, the 2014 Empulse is $11995, below the least expensive Zero S ZF8.5 at $12995. I think this only really matters for markets that are covered by both Brammo dealers and Zero dealers, and I think Zero has generally done a good job moving their 2014 bikes to this point. Zero may have to respond with a similar price cut to continue selling their 2014 bikes.
4. I want one :x
