Off-road sports are all about the experience. How does the dirt bike or ATV ride? How fast does it accelerate? What's it sound like?
Volcon Inc., an all-electric vehicle maker that recently picked the Austin area for its headquarters, plans to give both its engineers and potential buyers an opportunity to get that hands-on experience at its forthcoming headquarters and testing site just north of Austin in Liberty Hill.
The HQ site, its address still undisclosed, already has a few trails that go through a spread of cedar and oak trees, as well as over a creek. But the site will soon have a building that houses Volcon's electric vehicle production lines. There, it will make its two-wheeled Grunt, priced at $5,995; its four-wheeled Stag, which has a $14,995 price tag; as well as its four-wheeled Beast, which retails for $24,995. The Grunt will be available in the second quarter of next year, with the Stag coming in Q3 and the larger Beast launching in early 2022.
Eventually, the HQ site will be built out with a customer experience center that includes the off-road test ride track, space for camping and RVs, as well as a zipline. The company declined to share any employment figures for the new space, but it noted the company is already testing its Grunt prototypes there. Demo rides for the public will begin in April next year, with the full customer experience center and campgrounds coming online in early 2022.
The HQ news comes as Volcon on Dec. 1 launched its equity crowdfunding campaign on Wefunder. Just hours after its launch, the campaign site showed Volcon had raised $1.4 million-plus from more than 640 backers, which includes investors for a private version of the campaign launched a month ago. The investments, which can come from accredited investors and the public, are made through a future equity agreement that caps the company's valuation at $15 million.
Volcon plans to use the proceeds to hire sales and marketing teams, as well as expand its manufacturing capacity and distribution networks.
Chris Graebe, CEO at StartupCamp and a Volcon investor, said he recently rode one of the two-wheeled Grunt vehicles.
"The first thing I noticed was how quiet it was — typical gas powered motorcycles are loud — but The Grunt was 100% noise free," he wrote on Volcon's crowdfunding site. "It was also extremely simple to ride."
The startup in October announced it would make the Austin area its home base. It set up a temporary production facility in Round Rock while it hunted for its permanent location. The company is led by CEO Andrew Leisner, who was previously managing director of Bonnier Motorcycle Group, and it recently announced that Bruce Riggs, a former Ayro Inc. chief of operations and quality, will be Volcon's COO. Ayro is an Austin-area maker of light-duty electric trucks.
The Volcon HQ comes as Austin's electric vehicle scene continues to heat up. The most obvious new player is Tesla Inc., which is in the process of building its $1.1 billion factory just east of Austin's city limits in Travis County. Meanwhile, electric power train company Hyliion Inc. went public in October, and Ayro is scaling up to make tens of thousands of its vehicles.
