Only about a week before Brammo goes into full Empulse production. Judging from the
pictures of the production line, it looks like they are well on their way to putting out some product.
At the TTXGP Final, I had a pretty long conversation with Joe Wisman (the gentleman in the green shirt to the left in the picture below), who was responsible for the developing the Empulse production line (and also for raising Brian Wismann - That's Brian's dad!).
Something he told me that I found surprising (and I hope isn't a secret) is that building the battery on site was preferred over getting that outsourced somewhere where labor was cheaper. I thought that putting the battery together would be somewhat low-skilled, but labor intensive. It turns out that battery assembly is less labor intensive than I thought, and can be done very efficiently by the Brammo workers at the factory.
I'm really looking forward to getting my Empulse. It would be very nice if I had some was some way to find out what my actual number is in the queue, and then I could entertain myself with trying to figure out exactly when my bike would be coming off the production line. If I lived a lot closer, I would love to visit the factory and see my bike (or at least my bike's sibling). Sadly, Florida is a bit too far from Ashland for a quick visit like that.
In the past, when Brammo was building Atoms, they used to allow customers to visit the factory and even take photographs of their car on the production line. They ended up getting in a bit of trouble when a customer posted a picture of his car with the production schedule in the background! Oops.