Harley-Davidson has gone little by little but constantly deepening its electrification gauge. The LiveWire was the first output electric bike out of the factory, after years of cultivation. Riding features and exhibition generated positive feedback, but a lot of people twarted at its $30,000 price tag.
Still, if you’ve pay attention the technology in several sectors progress, perhaps you knew to expect that although the early sell price might be high, those numbers would ultimately fall to a more affordable standard. Sure enough, the LiveWire ONE came along in 2021—which is also when Harley declared plans to rotate off LiveWire into its own new brand. For all points and purposes, the LiveWire ONE was a LiveWire with a $21,999 MSRP to start—which is a considerable discount over the OG LiveWire.
As Harley was busy getting ready to go through with its special purpose acquisitions (SPAC) incorporation to take LiveWire public, in the early of 2022, we obtained perception into the future of LiveWire’s planned product shapes. The first would be the S2 Del Mar, and certainly, the limited-run Launch Edition version launched in May, 2022, kept up by the output run opening pre-orders in the back half of 2022.
The S2 bikes are Harley’s electric middleweights, with its timeline also talk about S3 lightweight machines generated in colaboration with KYMCO. After all that, it said, the S4 electric line will be focusing on electric heavyweight bikes—like the burning ones that have been Harley’s daily needs for a century or more.
This information has go public for quite some time—but until now, no certain public declarations had been made about the future of its combustion machines. In a January, 2023, Harley-Davidson Chairman and CEO, in the interview with the design publication Dezeen, stated that the company is presently on process turning to become all-electric at some point down the line. While he emphasized that this won’t happen in a blink of an eye, and did not popose a goal year (as some other companies might have), he said in no undecided terms that it’s already underway.
“Harley Davidson will be all-electric, at some point in time. But that will be a long-term switch over that needs to occur. It’s not something you can do overnight,” Zeitz said to Dezeen.
He continue to talk about wanting to respect the past while at the same time expanding from it, and also said of electrification that “it’s a natural growth that needed to happen.” Part of that evolution is, certainly, attracting new customers to this brand—aspirational, or otherwise. For example, elaboration of outfit lines, are a part of shoving the company in the front of people who are outside its essence forum, and who might not even have ridden any type of motorbike before.