22 • July 2023 • Powersports Business

Volcon teamed up with General Motors Powered Solutions to develop the powertrain for the Stag side-by-side . Photos courtesy of

Volcon and Powersports Business

BY BRENDAN BAKER EDITOR IN CHIEF

Volcon ( pronounced Vul-cun ) has been on the gas lately … Wait , that doesn ' t seem right . Instead , let ’ s say they flipped the switch in Texas , where key media , dealers , and international distributors got to take the Stag side-by-side out for a test drive .

The event was hosted at the Hyatt Regency Lost Pines Resort in Cedar Creek , Texas , where co-founder and CTO , Christian Okonsky , took part in a Q & A session detailing how Volcon has been able to produce the electric Stag through collaborations with strategic partners such as General Motors , BF Goodrich , Elka Suspension and Hayes Performance Systems . Attendees could also inspect the Stag and ask engineering and product development teams questions about the technology and its specifications .

“ We have tested , broken , fixed , broken again , and redeveloped many of the Stag ' s components throughout this entire process , leading to us upgrading many of the key suspension and drivetrain components to an automotive grade level . Traditional off-road components cannot handle the torque that the Stag has ,” says Okonsky .

According to him , the biggest challenge with electric vehicles is developing the high voltage side . He says the company ' s twowheeled electric vehicles , such as the Grunt , Runt , and the Brat , were built and developed internally . “ But with the Stag , you must have chassis , suspension , and high voltage . So , all those big pieces had to be addressed . We have one of the best lead engineers , Eduardo Salcedo , a graduate of a top motorsports

school in the Midwest . He was able to help us identify the pieces we needed .”

Okonsky says that Volcon was originally going to partner with a Chinese battery company that had partnered with BMW and Mercedes . “ We started down the path with a company called CATL , one of China ' s leading battery companies . They ' re very well known in that space , but that would mean we would have to do all the rest of the pieces ourselves . We would have to do the inverters on the motors , the controllers , and all those other pieces that exist

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