I would figure with Brammo being a small, undercapitalized, company there would not be many warehoused parts for anything but production. A look at the Zero forum shows a similar parts problem where most parts are used for new vehicle production and service parts support is lacking, taking a back seat to production needs. I doubt Polaris received many parts when they bought Brammo and most likely secured parts needed for production and not much else. Any Brammo inventory would have been used to build the few motorcycles Polaris built.
Now they need to make a decision about how to go forward. If they are going to support the Victory built Empulse they need to get suppliers to manufacture the pieces to build up their spare parts inventory. They already have a distribution system in place, however it is for a non-existent dealer network. So the system needs to be set up to deal with the 10's of thousands of IC motorcycles that Victory made which is a whole can of worms compared to dealing with the few Empulse motorcycles that were built. Except for lawsuits and PR nightmares, Polaris' most cost effective solution is to do nothing and see what kind of push back they get from those of us that bought these machines. Every Polaris built Empulse should still be on the factory warranty so this is a major problem.
I've talked about this before and lost everything on my Vectrix. But this is different---Vectrix completely failed and the workers and stockholders lost everything along with the customers and dealers. Polaris, on the other hand, is a large, profitable, intact company who is creating a huge PR problem that needs to be rectified. I have been in two other situations where a product had major problems and the parent companies resolved them to my satisfaction. Polaris needs to look at these kind of solutions to avoid legal trouble in the future.
My two issues were a 2015 VW Jetta TDI and a Samsung washing machine. First the Jetta. VW had an idea for several years they were in trouble but didn't prepare for the huge settlement they ended up with for cheating on the emissions of the TDI diesel. In the end they satisfied most of the customers by offering a repair of the vehicle to bring it into compliance with the emission standards or a buyback at pre "dieselgate" prices plus a substantial payment for the inconvenience of having to go through the process. Customers were given the option of what VW would do and how much payment they would receive along with a couple of years to continue to use the vehicle before you had to select which way you would go.
In the Samsung situation, I had just purchased a new washer that was found to be defective. About 2.5 million were involved. By the time of the recall, Samsung had already set up a plan to address the problem. In my case I was offered money (more than I had paid for the machine) to either buy another Samsung washer or slightly less to buy a different manufactures machine. In order to receive the settlement I had to provide a receipt for a new machine and remove the serial numbers from the Samsung and sign a paper saying that I would never use the machine in commercial operation or sell it and when I was to get rid of it, I must destroy it. Samsung would not provide parts or service but the machine remains in my garage as a backup.
So what should Polaris do? For the few machines out there, I think they need to take the Samsung approach. Buying all back would be less costly to Polaris than setting up a parts and service operation during the warranty period and extending the "five years service and ten years parts for Victory motorcycles" that was to be found in various press releases when Victory went under. And remember we have an additional battery warranty that goes ten years. No way of getting around that. I don't think Polaris management was thinking about the low volume Empulse when they made these claims as they had thousands of IC Victory's to dump on the market. Smart money would be to offer a settlement to all owners to cover all of their documented expenses related to the purchase of a 2016 Victory Empulse. And, like the washing machine, let the owner keep the bike but offer no support or warranty whatsoever--when it breaks or wrecks it's done. There will be a class action lawsuit about this if Polaris buries their head in the sand and hopes the problem goes away. It would only cost Polaris a few million dollars to pay off all the owners. A good class action law firm will suck that kind of money out of them in a matter of months and leave Polaris with a PR nightmare.
