Electric E-TECs on the way

IN an exclusive interview with Marine Business, BRP president and CEO José Boisjoli revealed long-term plans for hybrid and electric technology across some of the company’s outboard products.

Boisjoli said the pace of developments in new car technology would be used as a model for future outboard designs.

“We see the fast pace of new technology in cars. What we’re trying to do is leverage as much as we can from that because they have the volume to justify the investment, and because of the volume, the costs are going down. Right now we’re trying to reduce the time of implementing that sort of technology on our product,” said Boisjoli.

“We can think long-term about a hybrid product, we don’t have hybrid yet, but it will come. You can probably count on electric for some products. But again we’re looking at what’s happening in car technology. During the high price of fuel, the sales of hybrid and electric were doing quite well and now it’s declined [fuel prices], but it’s only a matter of time before it comes back.

“You can expect in the long-term to see those technologies in some (BRP) product. It’s more difficult on a snow mobile at minus 30 Celsius, but on other product lines it could support the new technology,” he said.

Marine Business interviewed Boisjoli in Queenstown, New Zealand, where BRP launched several new products across its diverse product portfolio, including Can-Am ATV and SSV, Spyder and SEA-DOOs.

Boisjoli said the next generation of E-TECs are in development and would feature a range of innovations to compete with the recent release of lighter, faster four-strokes.
“From 2003 to 2009 we released a new outboard engine platform (almost) every year. And now we are starting to work on the second generation of E-TEC. It’s our job to come back with a second generation with more performance, more power, but also fuel economy – they are features that will benefit thecustomer,” he said.

“The outboard business is a complex business because you have a wide range of products ... a lot of platforms. We are right now in the middle of all this and I think you can expect that BRP will be very competitive going forward in the outboard business.”

Diversification
Boisjoli  said  the  company’s diverse range of products will strengthen the BRP in the long-term and ensure stability in times of economic hardship.
“Our belief is that because of a more diverse product portfolio, we will be better or more resilient to recession,” said Boisjoli.

“Obviously we are building right now with seven product lines. We believe if you take a 10 year projection, BRP will be a lot stronger in terms of geographic diversification and be more resilient to recessions like we had two years ago.“
Boisjoli said it was a very sever recession. Overall the company laid off about 2000 people.

“It was the first time in 30 years that all of our market declined at the same time. We generally have  a recession every 10 years and in the previous recessions we always had some industry going up and some going down. A diversified company like us, we always hope that it wasn’t going to be so bad, but last year everything collapsed at the same time.”

The biggest market and the worse market was the united states. The US industry declined between 50-70 per cent over two years across all the brands. Boisjoli said countries like Australia, New Zealand and Canada, which are reliant on resources, weren’t hit so hard. Europe also felt the effects about 12 months after the US with a slow-up of sales across the board.

“Right now in those situations you always have to make tough choices. You have to decide how you preserve the long term while maximising the short term. There is no perfect decision, but our volume declined by about 35 per cent,” he said.

Boisjoli is optimistic for the future and said the situation is now stable, although some markets are performing better than others. The united states, in certain areas is still in decline, while other areas are experiencing growth. BRP believes it will take three to five years before the industry recovers completely from the recession.

Investment in R&D continued throughout the downturn to ensure a strong product line -up over coming years.

“We reduced, but we protected what we needed for the future. A good example was the side-by-side (Can-Am). We came out with the product this summer in 2010. In the middle of the recession two years before we decided with the board to continue investment in R&D, tooling and the assembly line. Because we are a private company we are able to invest in some long term activity. It’s a balance and we’re very happy because we have the support of the board,” said Boisjoli.

BRP’s diversification between outboards, SEA-DOOs, and its other products including CanAm quad bikes, side-by-sides and the unique three-wheel Spyder, will be further represented through its dealers with more in the future carrying the entire product range of BRP products.

“We are seeing this shift in North America. The message I gave to our dealers this morning was we believe we have to increase our presence in their dealership, which will indirectly impact on sales in your country. We are at the beginning of exponential growth because of product line and because of the focus of our dealers.”

Australian market
BRP’s share in Australia is one of the highest in the world for outboards. Boisjoli said Australia has always been very strong and things are going well with opportunity for growth.

“We believe we can continue to grow,. When we took over OMC in 2001 it was more difficult than we thought, the brand was damaged. We had to change the technology. That’s how we evolved and came up with E-TEC. We were in a rush, we had to build a line up as quickly as possible to have something to sell to the dealers. We have done a good job making the technology evolve and have implemented as many engines as we can and as many platforms as we can with a full range of engines.”

“I believe we still have in the marine business a very strong position in the Asia Pacific market, with room to grow,” said Boisjoli.