Waaaay back in 2010, the newly-minted BRD promised to deliver a pair of electric motorcycles to a hungry market, and four years later it’s almost ready to fulfill that promise. But first though, BRD decided it needed to change its name via what is the best press release I’ve ever seen.

Now known as Alta, the press release (also posted below) doesn’t mince words over the immensity of this announcement; the company as a whole just felt like Alta was a better name than BRD. So now BRD is Alta, and that’s that.

There is still a former Tesla executive on Alta’s Board of Directors, and the company will plans to deliver two versions of their Redshift motorcycle, the street legal SM and the dirt track-ready MX. The MX will top out at 80 MPH but weighs about 15-lbs less than the SM, which can go up to 85 MPH. The 5.2 kWh electric motor is rated at 50 miles per charge and can be charged in just four hours from a 110-volt outlet, and the 40-horsepower electric motor spins to over 13,000 RPM/ but weighs in at just 11-lbs.

The street-legal Redshift SM will run you $15,495 when it goes on sale, with the MX coming in at about $500 cheaper should Alta meet its targeted delivery day of the second quarter of 2015. Four years in though and we’re still waiting for BRD Alta to make the first important delivery.

Press Release

TL;DR: BRD wasn’t a great name for the company, and now we have a new one we like more: Alta.

BRD was never a great external name. It had important internal meaning to us but for a lot of reasons, we always communicated it to the outside world as either “a secret” or meaningless. It was awkward:

We don’t want to exaggerate the significance here to the heights of ethereal clouds where Zeus profoundly frolics. The typical rebranding sounds something like, “OMG, our new brand is the most amazing and important thing ever with so much meaning and richness.” But that is the commentary of a pretentious asshole when it really all starts out as just a name. Like Bob. Or Sue.