In 2014, Harley Davidson teased us with a potential electric bike for the future. The bike was named LiveWire, it had an unknown electric motor and it was a Harley, yeah, welcome to the 21st century. Recently the company has announced their strategy for 2020, by making bikes in those genres which are quite new to Harley Davidson. They have announced an adventure tourer by the name of “Pan America”, complete with long travel suspension and spoked wheels. They are also teasing a 900 cc naked "Streetfighter" along with few other vehicles. We will talk about them in detail in another article, in this one, we'd like to mention some features of the “LiveWire".Noise:
The first thing Harley fans would worry about is the lack of a sound in the new Harley Model. Well, there's good and bad news for them. The good news is that the new EV from Harley will not run quietly like every other electric bike. It will have a sound and a distinct one at that. Now comes the bad news, the sound won’t be like the iconic V-twin, rather it’ll be more like a jet engine taking off.
More miles per charge:
The bike was already in working condition in 2014. Recently Engadget published an article which claimed that the bike had a range around 60 miles and 74 BHP, they immediately pulled the article down but we can expect those numbers to only increase in a span of 4 years. The bike is still being worked on, mostly on its battery because according to “electrek.co”, a magazine which writes about all things electric, reported that the company is extensively looking for an Electric Vehicle project lead,a Developmental service engineer – Electric Vehicle and a number of Electric Vehicle Systems Engineers. All of the above job postings are in the electric department so it can be speculated that the company is making sure that their battery stands out from the crowd.
Competition:
The main competition of the LiveWire is already alive and kicking it every day. Zero Motorcycles features a bunch of naked and dirt bikes which, on an average, deliver approximately 100 miles of range per charge. They also offer 100+ NM of torque on all their motorcycles. With an already capable opponent, we can expect an equally worthy defender.Fun fact: Livewire was used in Age of Ultron by Black Widow when she was chasing the truck on which Captain America and Ultron were fighting. The Livewire will hit the roads in the USA in the month of August 2019. No announcement for Indian launch has been made though.
By: Yetnesh Dubey