Now it’s electric snowmobiles

Everything else seems to be going electric, so why not snowmobiles?

Montreal-based start-up Taiga Motors has unveiled what it says will be “the world’s first production electric snowmobile” – the Taiga TS2, Electrek reports.

In 2015, the company evolved from McGill’s racing team where the three co-founders, Paul Achard, Gabriel Bernatchez, and Sam Bruneau, worked on electric powertrains.

Bruneau says that the team was inspired by Tesla to design an electric snowmobile from scratch.

The new electric TS2 is under 226kgs fully loaded, Taiga says. It comes with a 15kWh battery pack. This powers a PMAC motor with 250Nm of torque and about 80kW of power output, going from 0 to 96.5km/h in three seconds.

The snowmobile has a 100km range. Charging takes about two hours through level 2 charging with an onboard charger, and the company says it will offer a DC fast-charging option for 80% charge in 20 minutes.

It will eventually be fully connected and do over-the-air software updates and owners will be able to configure their snowmobile from a mobile app with different riding modes.

Jonah Ryan-Davis, a firmware engineer at Taiga who previously worked at Tesla, told Electrek that everything is in place for new updates.

Customer feedback will be considered too.

Versions of the vehicle adapted for different uses will include the Utility, Touring, Crossover, and Mountain.

Taiga aims to have its electric snowmobile on the market next year and is taking reservations.

Electric snowmobile advantages include zero-emissions and less noise pollution.

With little to no standards and many two-stroke engines, fuel-powered snowmobiles are generally incredibly polluting – sometimes 50 times more polluting than an average car, Electrek says.

“You can hear a gas-powered snowmobile coming from miles away, which is again not what you want to hear in nature.”

Electric snowmobiles will sort that.