We keep hearing about LiveWire. Can't come soon enough. Here is the wonderful automotive writer for the Wall Street Journal, Dan Neil:

"Motorcycle sales are falling in the U.S. as boomers age out of their riding years. If the category is to grow again, motorcycles need to redesign around qualities that young people value, like urbanity, zero emissions and rideability. Like our little friend here ... the C Evolution. [It] is built around its air-cooled 8-kWh, 94-amp-hour lithium battery pack, using the same cells that power the BMW i3 electric car. .. Price: $14,640, including optional heated grips."

The BMW C has been on sale in Europe for four years! But BMW can leverage costs of development against its four-wheeled products. Harley Davidson cannot. Yeah, I know, it looks like a souped-up scooter but it can go 80 mph and it is aimed at the young 'uns.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/2018-bm...cle-1519322268

 

 

....not to be nasty, but glad I'll be too old to ride.

 

I’m not going to subscribe to WSJ, just to read the article.

Maybe it works for around town, where you are not inconvenienced by the charge process. But, that’s not how I ride. I’m good with HD experimenting with it, and releasing a model. But, we will never see a significant % of electric vehicles in our life time,
.

Edit: BTW...with a 94 Amp hour battery, you’d be lucky to get 1 hour of operating time. Especially if you wrist the throttle.

Just as a rough comparison. Our starter motors, although not very efficient, are 1.6 Kw. That means at 12 volts they draw 133 Amps. So, although that would not be the most efficient motor to drive an electric motorcycle, you could run 42 minutes on that 94 Amp hour battery. But, if all the millenials are going to ride is 5 miles to Starbucks for a grande mocha lite with extra foam..it would work for them.

Still...the most efficient method of storing energy, is gasoline in your gas tank.

 

Sorry, I refuse to be held hostage by the WSJ spam department, so I couldn't read the article, which is probably mostly ill-informed motorbike ****, anyway.

BUT, the headline is more or less correct-the future of personal transportation is electric, not a matter of if, but when.

I'd be very interested in an electric HD-or maybe one of these:

http://configurator.energicamotorusa.com/start

or these:

http://www.ktmfreeride-e.com/en

As the saying goes, "The future is already here-it's just unevenly distributed".

 

A hybrid would be interesting. Extend your fuel range and a big jump in torque / HP. No need to charge it and it can run on electricity in town like the cars do.

 

You’ve gotta be kidding me?
STANDARD PRICE: $ 23,400
ENGINE
POWER:
80 kW (ca 109 cv)
TORQUE:
180 Nm

BATTERY
CAPACITY:
11.7 kWh
LIFE:
1200 cycles @ 80% capacity (100% DOD)

Even if you run the bike at 25% max power, with 11.7 kWh...you can only run for 1 hour. But, then as I said in another thread...maybe that’s all the millennials for a trip to Starsucks. .

 

Should go well with the man capris and canvas sneakers with white soles.

Has this new generation got the circumcision thing mixed up with castration?

 

Not this week, or next, or the one after that, for me, at least, but:
-$23K is MSRP, not necessariy OTDP;
-the Energica has the +15% Italian Design and +20% Early Adopter price premium built in (have you seen what a Panigale V4 ICE lists for? In fact, the Energica bikes are priced in line with other high-end Euro sportbikes);
-range is equivalent to a Sportster with peanut tank.
-one can't deny they are simply gorgeous.

I featured the Energica because it's already in production and Dorna Sports (think MotoGP www.dorna.com) has chosen it as the supplier for the FIM Moto-e World Cup. And Energica's CEO, Livia Cevoloni, is quite the hottie.

Electrics are here today, they're just going to get better and cheaper, and it will be just a matter of time before ICE engines in general will be banned for personal transportation. The MoCo is already late to the game.

But I'm going the miss that ICE sound.

 

You'd better believe electrics are coming and they're going to take an increasingly bigger bite of the market share pie as the years roll on. If HD decided to ignore that market (glad they were smart enough not to) they would simply be watching a host of other companies offer dozens of electrics and occupy the spending of so many younger riders. These are riders who will want to ride...not wrench. They want it easier and they'll find it or go elsewhere with their money. HD will constantly be competing for sales; it's just that the competition of tomorrow won't be what it was 20 years ago when HD was the complete bully on the block. We're really at a transition point.