Heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar has unveiled a new line of home and outdoor portable generators, marking its entry into the power market.
“This is about providing a new customer base with the right solutions for their home and outdoor power needs that reflect the reliability, rugged capabilities, and quality with which Cat products are known,” says George Taylor, the company’s chief marketing officer.
The Cat RP Series is a new line of generators that are designed to provide backup or recreational power to residential users and portable power to professional contractors. Caterpillar says the initial models in the series range in size and power from 3.6 to 7.5 kilowatts in North America and 2.5 to 4.4 kilowatts in Europe.
Caterpillar is also setting up a new multi-channel distribution approach for the product, which includes Cat Dealers, local retailers, and eventually national retailers and wholesalers. These will serve as Cat Home & Outdoor Power authorized sales and service centers.
“We want to connect these customers to Caterpillar’s decades of experience in the electric power business, and this new distribution approach means we can do just that,” Taylor says.
The new products will be introduced to distribution networks in the U.S. and Canada for the rest of this year, and the company will expand the product offering in 2017.
