Craig Bramscher, CEO of the Oregon-based electric motorcycle manufacturer Brammo, told Portland business leaders this week that he plans to take the company public by the middle of 2015.

Bramscher said Brammo has been meeting with some of the same investment bankers that helped take Tesla public. “It’s always next year, but Tesla showed there’s an appetite for it,” he said. “I’m hoping to do it late next year or in the middle of 2015.”

Brammo, which sells the Enertia and Empulse electric motorcycles, has raised about $17 million over the last two years. The company’s goal is to raise about $150 million in private funds, then another $150 million from an IPO. The funds could be used not only to further develop its motorcycle business, but also to produce an electric car. Bramscher said the company already has an EV prototype about 85 percent done.

Bramscher’s story has several things in common with a certain other EV entrepreneur. He sold a tech company called Dream Media for a tidy profit, then turned his attention to building the kind of electric car he’d like to buy.

“When I sold Dream Media on my very lucky day with the stock market, I thought I’d buy a ‘super-car,’” said the “pro athlete-sized” Bramscher. “It turned out my ‘petiteness’ wouldn’t fit into a Lamborghini or a Ferrari.”

His team spent several years working on an electric car that would satisfy Bramscher’s need for speed, but ended up taking the two-wheeled option. “It would sound better to say I was passionate about [environmentalism], but I was a gearhead,” he said. “We had all these tools for building a very fast car, but when we built this exotic one-person motorcycle and took it on the road, we thought, this is it.”  

Source: Sustainable Business Oregon via AutoBlog Green