The Harley Davidson Livewire electric bike thread

They probably tried to charge it with something beside Official Licensed Harley Davidson electricity.

With a sub 100 mile range the only possible use case is local errands/commuting. Riding 20-30 miles just to get to the good roads, spending an afternoon having fun, and then riding home - which is about how the scenario looks for most people weather that "afternoon having fun" is a poker run, squiding up some canyons, going down some fire roads, or just cruising along looking at the view and stopping for BBQ. For almost anyone not running errands/commuting, however they enjoy motorcycling, 100ish miles just isn't enough.

There's already a whole product segment designed for exclusively short trips in city environments. Small scooters. That's the competition for electric motorcycles today. Yes, a livewire or Zero will obliterate any 250cc scooter at acceleration and top speed. But it's limited to city riding, where great acceleration and high top speed just don't matter very much - it doesn't matter if the bike can do 100mph if you're splitting in traffic, and it just doesn't matter if it can accelerate like a motorcycle if there's a stop light in another block. Which isn't to say there still aren't times when a top speed faster than traffic and great acceleration won't be tons of fun, but how much is occasionally having a little more fun on the way to the store worth?

If a typical 250cc scooter is in the $5,000 range, Zero is asking people to pay about double that (in the form of the FX models) for occasional bought's of increased fun in limited situations. Which is a lot, but not completely stupid. The SR/F makes no sense at $15,000 more than that, for slightly more chances at occasionally having more fun than a 250cc scooter. The livewire is just laughable at $25,000 more.

Today, given where we are at right now with range and changing infrastructure, what makes sense are small e-bike style electric motorcycles. Very light weight, very narrow, can out accelerate most cars up to city speeds, and cost about the same - if not less - than a comparable scooter. If harley wanted to get the yutes excited, they should have copied Sun Ron. 50 miles, 100 lbs, 50mph quickly, and can fit in a bicycle rack, for about $4,000. They'd need to put signals/lights on it to sell it as a road legal model motorcycle, but that's more of the direction they should have gone. Price of a KLR, better performance than a scooter.

https://lunacycle.com/sur-ron-x-bike-black-edition/

Without the range to ride a whole day, either through batteries or chargers, the only reason to buy a livewire or even sr/f instead of a scooter is acceleration ... acceleration that you can't even use that much because you can't ride to where you can use that fun. That's a hard sell for $25,000 more. That's why it was a bad idea from the drawing board forward, the world isn't in a place yet where 100 mile range is good for anything but the shittiest kind of riding. A fun bike that is only capable of going to work and back is polishing a turd.

Have fun riding your scooter to the market!
I'm having a blast blowing away liter sport bikes on my Zero SR/F on the mountain roads around here. It would be just as fun on a Livewire too.
Fun is worth a lot!

Seriously, no judgement, I won't argue, describe your typical day out on the SR/F. I'm not completely unfamiliar with the santa cruz area. So day goes like, ride 10 miles to get to highway 9, bomb up it and over to alice's for lunch, then right back because that's probably about half the range used getting there? I'm sure it's a lot of fun for that, but what else can you do with it besides ride the roads directly around you for 2 hours before going home? What if you want to go ride some of the awesome roads a little bit north in Marin? Ride an hour to get there, then run out of charge half way back? What if you want to make a little loop out of highway 25? Or meet a friend in San Jose and start your ride there together? It's just so limited for so much money.

Limited to short trips ... where a bicycle sized EM is going to be just as much fun 90% of the time. Which is the kind of EM yutes are actually interested in. The reason the livewire exists.

Yes, it's not easy to get the range, however, there's enough level 2 charge stations around now that I can ride 150 miles or more if I stop for about 30 minutes and top off. Like you say, l can turn back at Alice's, or pop down to Portola Valley 5 miles away and get enough charge to extend the ride. Usually head to the coast before heading back.
Highway 25 is a bit more challenging... it will happen soon enough.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/14/harley-pulls-plug-on-livewire-production-shortly-after-ev-debut/

Priceless.

We very satisfied SR/F riders must be numbskulls. How could we possibly be happy with such a lame motorcycle?

Just a suggestion: try one. It won’t replace your ICE motos. It’s something different.

Hmmm... You could take along a load of extra battery capacity in a large motorcycle trailer.

^^^ That and or saddle bags [just for THE TRIP] rented from the dealer

Choice-supportive bias

Nope.

To be clear, I agree if you could only have one motorcycle, the current electrics would not be a good choice for most riders on this forum, including me.
I also have a Tiger 800 XR and a CRF250L, enjoy them both, and have previously owned many other motos that I also enjoyed, including a couple of R1200 GSs air and LC, and rented a few others.
None are as much fun for me as the SR/F is on pavement, really not even close. Within its limitations this is something special. I'll wager the livewire also is something special. Yes range is an issue. YMMV.

Once again: try one. It's just different, in a very good way.

O/w, you've made your snarky point, please move on.

You don't think it's even a possibility? I think that's a sign it's possible.

If Zero said: I'll buy your SR/F back for your cost plus an extra grand for your hassle, would I take that offer?
No.
No Kool Aid here, I just really enjoy this niche product, within its limitations, more than any other moto I've owned, rented, or borrowed.
YMMV

FWIW, I just saw this from Motorcycle.com at:

https://www.motorcycle.com/manufact...ey-davidson-suspends-livewire-production.html

“...According to the WSJ article, Harley-Davidson has asked customers to avoid charging their LiveWires with their home outlets and instead charge via DCFC at their local Harley-Davidson dealership until the matter is resolved.

The charging issue, says Harley, does not compromise the safety of the LiveWire to operate...”

Also from the article, quoted from their emailed response about the charging issue:

“As we lead in the electrification of motorcycles...."

I beg your pardon? Is that not yet another example of HD's ridonkulous arrogance or what??? They're the new kid in the EM game (10 years after Zero created the market for EMs), they have no grasp of the importance of genuine Level 2 charging, and apparently can't even get Level 1 to work right (which is pretty damn simple), all of which rather embarrassingly applies to the most expensive production EM on the planet by a large margin, only a very few of which have actually reached buyers, and that's how they "lead in the electrification of motorcycles"?!?!? Wow. Are they trying to make themselves look like arrogant fools?

I can't even...........

For all the HD fans who can't figure out why Harley bashing is such a popular sport - but not so much for other brands - this is a prime example. It's not the bikes. It's the attitude. That transparently childish, utterly unjustifiable attitude. It just begs for ridicule. And now HD is smearing it on EMs.

I honestly don't care. Some marketoid hype, nobody takes it seriously. They are, indeed, the first mainstream motorcycle manufacturer with an EV on the American market. That's remarkable, and that's leadership.

"Good for a Harley" and "great for what it is" are much more irksome.

Leader of EV motorcycles, but don't charge it at home - what a joke.

I wonder if this charging issue is effecting the Long Way Up ride...

I don't think Charley or Ewan have homes in South America.