Tag: skiing

This article was written by Jared Lindzon and was published in the Toronto Star on November 8, 2025.

Through man­u­fac­tur­ing chal­lenges and order delays, cred­itor pro­tec­tion and restruc­tur­ing, Sam Bruneau says Taiga Motors’ ori­ginal thesis — that snow­mobile and Jet Ski riders want an elec­tric altern­at­ive, and that Canada is the best place to build them — hasn’t wavered.

“The product types, the ver­tical integ­ra­tion, doing it all under one roof and doing it in Canada,” he says. “That has remained the same as our ori­ginal busi­ness plan in 2015.” That year, Bruneau teamed up with Paul Achard and Gab­riel Bernatchez — engin­eer­ing class­mates and team­mates in extra­cur­ricular elec­tric race car design com­pet­i­tion McGill For­mula Elec­tric — to make that dream a real­ity.

After design­ing a pro­to­type elec­tric snow­mobile from their shared apart­ment in Montreal and haul­ing it around North Amer­ica in a ren­ted pickup, the co­founders found a mar­ket eager for a quieter, safer, more sus­tain­able altern­at­ive.

In 2021, Taiga went pub­lic via a spe­cial pur­pose acquis­i­tion com­pany (SPAC) that put its value at more than half a bil­lion dol­lars. In 2022, it began man­u­fac­tur­ing elec­tric snow­mo­biles and per­sonal water­craft from its Montreal facil­ity and, by 2023, the com­pany employed about 300 work­ers.

But shortly after going pub­lic, Taiga began run­ning into rough patches. Bruneau says rising interest rates, sup­ply­chain issues and a global chip short­age hobbled the star­tup as it sought to cre­ate and source new parts for a new product cat­egory. By 2024, Taiga Motors had laid off all but 70 staff, sus­pen­ded pro­duc­tion and filed for cred­itor pro­tec­tion, bur­den­ing its earli­est and most pas­sion­ate sup­port­ers — includ­ing employ­ees, investors and deposit­pay­ing cus­tom­ers — with fin­an­cial losses.

“It’s a ter­rible feel­ing to dis­ap­point so many who were ral­ly­ing behind Taiga,” Bruneau says. “The core thesis was work­ing, we were get­ting there — just a year or a year and a half behind sched­ule — and that has a huge impact on the fin­an­cials of com­pan­ies in the pub­lic mar­kets.”

In Octo­ber 2024, Taiga Motors was thrown a buoy by Brit­ish elec­tric boat entre­pren­eur and investor Stew­art Wilkin­son. Now, Taiga is attempt­ing a comeback, announ­cing its latest water­craft — the three­seater Orca WX3 — at the Monaco Yacht Club in early Septem­ber, along­side its entry into the European mar­ket.

The Star caught up with Bruneau, who remains Taiga’s CEO and pub­lic face, from its Montreal headquar­ters to under­stand what went wrong, why he’s so cer­tain the future of leis­ure crafts is elec­tric, and why the com­pany deserves a second chance.

Did you ride snow­mo­biles grow­ing up?

We didn’t own a snow­mobile, but I did some tour­ing with friends and fam­ily. Grow­ing up in Que­bec, you tend to spend a lot of time in the snow. I did a lot of ski­ing as a kid, and through that you see a lot of the fric­tion between out­door com­munit­ies.

How so?

We all have the same goal — to enjoy these beau­ti­ful out­door spaces — but the machines are loud, and quite pol­lut­ing. It’s sim­ilar with Jet Skis in the sum­mer. People want to enjoy the water and, unfor­tu­nately, the gas ones are extremely loud and can be used in dan­ger­ous ways.

Did you pur­sue an engin­eer­ing degree to address that ten­sion?

I never really pic­tured entre­pren­eur­ship. I got into engin­eer­ing because of a pas­sion for sus­tain­able energy. I wanted to do something to pro­tect the envir­on­ment, but I assumed I would be doing research into fusion energy or something.

How did Taiga come about?

When I star­ted at McGill in 2010, Tesla was just start­ing to take off and major man­u­fac­tur­ers were start­ing to invest in elec­tric cars, but nobody was work­ing on this space that felt very close to home.

My co­founders and I are all from dif­fer­ent parts of Que­bec, but all had the same pas­sion for the out­doors and tech­no­logy. We real­ized we could do what Tesla did; start with a clean sheet and rein­vent the snow­mobile as an elec­tric vehicle.

If someone else was already work­ing on it, we prob­ably wouldn’t have done it, but we saw this big prob­lem and knew people wanted a solu­tion.

Is it really that big of a prob­lem for the envir­on­ment?

Because they are used on a smal­ler scale, gov­ern­ments impose less strin­gent reg­u­la­tions.

Cars are required to have cata­lytic con­vert­ers, which remove a lot of the nasty byproducts of com­bus­tion engines, but snow­mo­biles and Jet Skis don’t. Their four­stroke engines pol­lute as much as 40 cars on a per­kilo­metre basis.

For Jet Skis, those par­tic­u­lates and hydro­car­bons go straight into the water­ways. There might be less of them, but each has a much big­ger and more dir­ect envir­on­mental impact.

What are the bene­fits?

The silent oper­a­tion is a gamechanger for riders and every­one around them. They run about 30 times quieter than gas altern­at­ives at full throttle. That allows you to really enjoy nature; all you hear is wind and water or snow. It feels more like sail­ing or ski­ing, and you can enjoy the fresh air without the exhaust smell.

Elec­tric engines offer instant torque, so faster accel­er­a­tion. It’s also a lot safer, espe­cially for rental pro­viders and tour oper­at­ors, because you can set spe­cific speed lim­its, and track where they go.

In 2026, we’re intro­du­cing geofen­cing, which allows for the abil­ity to restrict access or speed in spe­cific areas using GPS. For a fam­ily, that means you can con­trol where your teen can ride, and how fast.

In Toronto, there’s been a lot of con­cern over Jet Skis dis­rupt­ing local wild­life or get­ting too close to busy shorelines, so lim­it­ing Jet Skis to cer­tain speeds or areas could be game­chan­ging.

We’re already hav­ing dis­cus­sions with cus­tom­ers about open­ing restric­ted water­ways to elec­tric vehicles in areas that cur­rently ban per­sonal water­crafts.

What about the down­sides?

There are two main ones for all EVs: the upfront cost is about 20 to 30 per cent higher, and there is less range.

On the price side, it becomes costef­fi­cient over time. Not only are you not pay­ing for gas, but own­er­ship costs are lower. There are no oil changes, or coolant, or win­ter­iz­a­tion require­ments. For fleet own­ers, you can save upwards of $7,000 across the life­time of the vehicle, because it’s used every day. For indi­vidu­als, the total cost of own­er­ship is $3,000 to $4,000 less.

As for range, our water­crafts get about two hours on a full charge. Unlike a car, most riders aren’t wor­ried about the occa­sional road trip. Long­dis­tance riders are about 10 per cent of the Jet Ski mar­ket and 20 to 30 per cent on the snow­mobile side. The snow­mo­biles get about 100 kilo­metres of range, and with fast char­gers becom­ing more avail­able it’s becom­ing easier to stop for a quick cof­fee and charge.

What chal­lenges did the com­pany run into fol­low­ing its 2021 SPAC?

We had just set up pro­duc­tion, had a big order book, lots of optim­ism about the product, get­ting those first parts from sup­pli­ers, and things were look­ing good.

Then we star­ted hav­ing prob­lems, start­ing with the sup­ply­chain crisis. Auto­makers stopped pro­duc­tion because they couldn’t access micro­chips, and we star­ted get­ting calls from sup­pli­ers say­ing those com­pan­ies were tak­ing our ship­ment because they buy $5 bil­lion, and we were order­ing $1 mil­lion.

We’re also cre­at­ing these com­plex parts for the first time and there’s a high bar for safety and reli­ab­il­ity — everything needs to be tested and val­id­ated — and it’s hard to pivot. If the mar­ket changes, or sup­ply chains col­lapse, it has a long­last­ing impact.

The team did everything pos­sible to keep pro­duc­tion on track, but there were delays and cus­tom­ers got frus­trated, so investors got frus­trated. As a pub­lic com­pany, that cre­ated chal­len­ging mar­ket dynam­ics.

Which proved more chal­len­ging, the tech­no­logy or the mar­ket?

On paper, the tech­no­logy is a lot more com­plic­ated — there’s a lot of new IP — but on an emo­tional level, the mar­ket. Tech­no­logy is math, which is pre­dict­able; the mar­ket is human, which isn’t.

What hap­pens now that you’ve been acquired?

We just launched a new model in Monaco — a more ver­sat­ile, lar­ger per­sonal water­craft — and we’re still execut­ing that same road map. The core plan hasn’t changed.

We’re cur­rently at 80 employ­ees, and we’re hop­ing to scale to 150 by the end of next year. We’re a private com­pany once again, just focused on exe­cu­tion. So far, we’ve sold about 1,500 vehicles — about half snow, half water­craft — and we’re aim­ing for about 200 a month through next year.

We’re see­ing tre­mend­ous interest from the European mar­ket, which is fur­ther ahead on elec­tric adop­tion, but everything will be designed and built here in Canada. We’re also work­ing with a group of com­pan­ies to lever­age our tech­no­logy in the wider boat­ing space and enable more man­u­fac­tures to go elec­tric.

What about your ini­tial back­ers?

The early­stage ven­ture investors under­stood the risks and while they were dis­ap­poin­ted, they remain sup­port­ive. Many of them were impact investors, and they’re happy we’re able to con­tinue.

Many of our cus­tom­ers were relieved, too, because they want this in the mar­ket. Even though depos­its have tech­nic­ally been wiped in the restruc­tur­ing, we’re going to hon­our those as best we can.

Taiga has seen extreme highs and lows. Are you now in the middle?

We’re try­ing to find a road with fewer wild swings. A restruc­tur­ing is the worst thing you can exper­i­ence in busi­ness, and we’re tak­ing a more cau­tious approach so we can sur­vive another 10 years.

The real­ity is that chan­ging an industry takes time, it’s about per­sever­ance and sus­tain­able growth, but we still need to push more aggress­ively than an estab­lished com­pany. We’re try­ing to do something that no one else is doing, so it’s going to be uncom­fort­able at times.

“The silent oper­a­tion is a gamechanger for riders and every­one around them. They run about 30 times quieter than gas altern­at­ives at full throttle. That allows you to really enjoy nature; all you hear is wind and water or snow. It feels more like sail­ing or ski­ing, and you can enjoy the fresh air without the exhaust smell.

SAM BRUNEAU CEO TAIGA MOTORS