Tag: Livewire

Happy Thanksgiving, and let’s hear from you…

My first motorcycle had 3 cubic inches. This one must be 48 times better.

I love this time of year.  The temperatures are nice (although it’s raining here in So Cal today and for the next couple of days), it’s good to get together with friends and family, and like most folks fortunate who live in the US, I have a lot for which I am thankful.

Earlier this week, I picked up a screw in one of my Subie’s tires, so it was off to America’s Tire, where they fix these things for free.  The idea is that you’ll think of them first when it’s time for new tires, and in my case, you can bet that’s going to happen.   It was a 2-hour wait, and I used that time to go for a walk.  Our local Harley dealer is just up the street from the tire place, I hadn’t been in a Harley showroom in a while, so I stopped by to check things out.

 

Things have changed from when I rode a Harley.  In those days, any Harley dealership was a hopping place.   When I walked over to the dealer this week, the place was mostly empty, they didn’t have a ton of T-shirts, and there were plenty of motorcycles.  It’s a world gone mad, I tell you.

Sometime when I wasn’t looking, production shifted from T-shirts to motorcycles. In the early and mid-1990s, you’d have to go to the Laughlin River Run, Daytona, or Sturgis to see this many Harleys in one spot.
Ah, hope springs eternal. A thousand dollar dealer markup? At least these folks are honest about it, and they don’t try to disguise gouging as freight and setup.

I haven’t kept up with the latest from Harley, other than the headline-grabbing stuff about the Livewire.  I guess they had a hiccup with the initial rollout, but that sort of thing happens and I hear it’s been fixed.  What hasn’t been fixed is the Milwaukee notion that any Harley is worth $30K, and I think that’s one of the major reasons the bar-and-shield folks’ best days are in the rear-view mirror.  I haven’t heard that Livewires are flying out of the showrooms, and judging by the looks of the dealer I visited, neither is anything else.  It’s not just me saying this…the stock market shows a Harley trend that is downright scary.  Harley has ridden their rebel reputation big time since the early 1990s, but one place you don’t want to buck the trend is in the stock market.

Harley’s stock performance over the last 5 years.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average over the last five years. It’s been said that a rising tide lifts all boats. Maybe it does. Maybe Harley’s stock would have been much lower without the bull market of the last few years. Maybe, maybe, maybe….

The Harley sales guy was eager to help, so I asked him about the Bronx 975 (Gresh did a piece on it not too long ago).  My guy never heard of the Bronx, so I asked if they had any Sportsters (there was one, so maybe they are selling better).  I then asked about Harley’s Street models (the 500 and 750 V-twins), and he told me there were none.  “They didn’t sell too well,” he said.  I thought that was unfortunate.   I’m conceited enough to think that if Gresh and I had ridden those bikes in Baja, if Harley offered guided Baja tours to Street buyers, and if Harley had an effective blog, that bike could have been a winner.  We sure sold a lot of motorcycles at CSC with those Baja tours (including to folks who didn’t ride with us in Baja).  It was just the idea that they could (that, of course, and the CSC motorcycles’ price).  Good buddy Dan is adventure touring in Tunisia right now along with a bunch of other Guzzistas on a ride organized by Moto Guzzi.  I think that’s brilliant (and I’m jealous).   Tunisia!  Damn, that’s exotic!

I don’t think there’s much of a future in two-wheeled, 900-pound, 114-cubic-inch dinosaurs, but hey, what do I know?  That’s a rhetorical question…I think my lack of knowledge is right up there with the industry wizards who continue to ponder the “what can we do about the sad state of the motorcycle industry” question, and then continue to offer 114-cubic-inch, $30,000 motorcycles that sit for presumably extended periods on showroom floors.  And like I said earlier, I don’t think ebikes are the answer.

So, what do you think?  Let us know with a comment or two.  We love hearing from you.  And I think the folks in Milwaukee would, too.  They read these pages, I think, judging by what I’m seeing on Google Analytics.  Let us know.

Top This

I’m a big fan of electric motorcycles. I like electrical stuff in general and I spent most of my working life as an electrician with benefits. Harley’s new Livewire E-Hog is an impressive first effort but at $30,000 dollars a copy it is a lousy deal compared to E-bikes from other manufacturers. You can easily beat the Livewire in both speed and distance for half the cost but that’s not the Livewire’s major problem.

The Livewire’s problem is industry-wide. Harley and those other guys are trying to duplicate the internal combustion experience with an electric motorcycle and they are burning a lot of joules doing it. Electric motorcycles are not direct IC replacements and their riders understand this.

For motorcycles, battery technology today is not compact enough and recharges too slowly for a rider with no fixed destination in mind. Until manufacturers can agree on a standard-sized, easily swappable battery pack we are stuck waiting for the bike. The first battery operated power tools were like this: you had to plug the whole tool in and wait. No work could be done until the thing was charged.

With standard-sized batteries (within a product line) cordless power tools have nearly supplanted the old, outlet-bound stuff. It takes only a second to swap in a new battery and you are back on the job doing whatever it is that you do. No one has range anxiety because there’s always a hot battery in the charger ready to use. Tesla is working on speeding up charge wait times by swapping the huge battery in their cars and it only takes a few minutes. When an electric vehicle can pull up to a gas station and swap in a charged battery as fast as I can change my power drill battery they will have become viable transportation.

The reality is, manufacturers are not going to standardize battery sizes. The best we can hope for is a battery changeable along the lines of the power tool situation: each battery is specific to the brand. Even that will not happen soon and maybe if you move the goal posts it doesn’t need to happen for the majority of users.

That leaves commuting back and forth to work as the ideal use for an electric motorcycle. You can have a charging source at both ends of the ride and you will be busy working or puttering about the house while the bike charges so there’s no down time. Give up on the idea of e-bikes matching IC bikes in all instances. The highest and best use of electric motorcycles is a situation where you have time to kill between rides.

I know The Motor Company is not going to listen to me, but here goes: Harley, stop making expensive, high performance electric motorcycles. I’ve seen your lighter weight electric bikes and they are so far removed from the traditional Harley-Davidson customer they might as well be electric Buells.

Harley’s marketing for as long as I can remember has been based on heritage. Timeless styling and traditional products have served you well. For a successful E-bike look to your past and the Topper scooter; it’s the ideal commuter platform to modernize (not too much) and electrify. The boxy rear section can hold a huge battery bank without looking like it’s holding a huge battery bank. It’s a classic form that simply drips Harley-Davidson heritage and the youth of America will go gaga over the styling. Keep the thing below $4000 so a normal person can afford one. You’ll have to outsource most of the drivetrain components to keep the price reasonable but you can slap the parts together in an old V-Rod factory and call it made in the USA!

The Motley Fool weighs in…

The Motley Fool is an investment advisory service newsletter I’ve been following since the 1990s, and my take on things is they generally have good advice and make predictions that have proven to be sound.  Most recently, The Motley Fool published an article (Harley-Davidson Really Misjudged the Electric Motorcycle Market) about Harley’s Livewire electric motorcycle.   Their take on the new Harley is the same as ours…Harley’s marketing muscle and distribution channels will help, but the idea of a $35K+ electric motorcycle nearly guarantees a dead-on-arrival introduction.   The Motley Fool piece is well reasoned and mirrors our earlier prediction.  Let’s hope both we and The Motley Fool are wrong.

Managing Expectations

Alta, a manufacturer of electric dirt bikes, very recently announced they are closing their doors.   Here’s the article I read on it:  Alta Motors Ceases Operations.  This is interesting on several levels.  Alta previously announced a strategic partnership with Harley-Davidson.  I thought this would figure into Harley’s Livewire project and help both companies enormously, but I guess that isn’t the case.  Last year, Alta lowered their prices substantially.  I thought this would  increase their sales, even though their prices were still high.  Alta had the electric dirt bike niche all to themselves, and this niche seemed to be more suited to an electric motorcycle’s range limitations.   Basically, motocross racing doesn’t require extended range, making Alta’s focus appear to be a well-thought-out strategy.   And finally, Alta had sold a large number of bikes, and they had orders for several hundred more (see the link above).

I guess, in the final analysis, it all comes down to profitability and cash reserves, and if you don’t have enough of either, you can’t keep going.  This makes Alta the second big US e-bike effort to flop (the first being the Brammo).

We are living in interesting times, and that is especially true with respect to the e-bike world.  The e-bike industry is simultaneously emerging and going through a shakeout.

I have been to the mountain. In this case, I did it on Slick. Slick isn’t the last e-bike that will emerge from Chongqing’s inner chambers; he’s only the first of many.

The CSC City Slicker, the newest player in this arena, is already playing a significant role.  The three big things Slick has going for it are its price, its quality (it’s world-class; see our earlier blog posts) and CSC’s well-earned reputation for customer service.  The biggest challenges for CSC and the City Slicker, I think, will be overcoming the US aversion to Chinese products, the ongoing uncertainties in the US/China trade relationship, and redefining customer expectations.

Overcoming US aversion to Chinese products is the least of these issues, and personally, I wouldn’t waste a single second attempting to do so. I think CSC and Zongshen put that issue to bed with the RX3 (it’s a world-class machine, with quality as good as or better than any motorcycle produced anywhere in the world).  To be blunt, anybody still singing songs about Chinese slave labor and low Chinese quality is too stupid and too ignorant to waste time listening to.  They won’t change their minds, so expending any effort attempting to convince them otherwise is an exercise in futility.  Hey, there are still people who think the earth is flat and that we faked the moon landing.  Best to forget about them, thank your lucky stars you aren’t that stupid, and move on.

I think the current uncertainties in the US/China trade relationship will sort themselves out within the next several months.   I think the tariff issue will either go away or have relatively insignificant effects, and I think much of what is going on now is posturing and positioning for a serious set of negotiations between our leaders.  Our trading relationship with China is, to borrow a phrase, too big to fail.

So we’re down to that last issue, redefining expectations, and that will be the biggest challenge for CSC and the electric motorcycle market.  There’s no question that CSC has a pricing advantage that is insurmountable, and I think when CSC announced the City Slicker it set a new reality in the US e-bike industry.  I think Alta realized that and that it might have played a role in their throwing in the towel.   I have to think that the folks at Zero are similarly eyeing the situation and ingesting huge amounts of Pepto-Bismol (and that’s using as charitable a phrase as I can think of).   You might argue that Alta and Zero have (or had) bigger motorcycles with different missions, but that would be as shortsighted and wrong as arguing that all Chinese goods are low quality or the earth is flat.  Yes, Zero motorcycles are bigger and have more capability, but that’s the world as it exists this instant.  The world does not stand still, my friends.   Do you think, even for one second, that the City Slicker is the only sensibly-priced e-bike that will emerge from Chongqing?  Do you think that future e-bikes from China will be small and have the same limitations as do today’s e-bikes?   I have been to the mountain, folks.  The answer is no.

A street scene in Beijing. You might see 50 e-bikes for every gas-powered scooter over there. It’s a tsunami, and it’s coming this way, folks.

But I digress:  Back to this expectations thing.   The City Slicker is not a bike that you can hop on and ride 2000 miles through Baja with a few stops for gas (or topping off the battery).  The range is limited to something like 40 to 60 miles today, depending on how fast you want to go.   The challenge here is to reach customers willing to use their City Slickers like their iPhones…something you plug in and top off whenever you have a chance.  That’s a different market than folks who buy internal combustion bikes.  But it’s potentially a huge market, as I saw firsthand in China where zillions of e-bikes were tethered to extension cords in front of every business on every city street.   More on this expectations thing:  CSC recently announced the price for a replacement Slick battery, and I think it’s about $1100.  Some of the keyboard commandos were choking on that number.  Hey, go price a replacement Zero battery.   You could buy three brand new City Slickers for what a Zero battery costs.   Like I said earlier, the challenge is going to be redefining expectations.  Are we up for it and will CSC market the City Slicker (and the Chinese e-bikes that will inevitably follow) in a manner that emphasizes this new reality?

Time will tell, but I know where I’d put my money.

Wild Conjecture: The Harley-Davidson Livewire

I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings but us oldsters are through. Our time has passed. No one cares if we like electric motorcycles or have range anxiety or just don’t like the silence. They don’t care. Bemoan the new kids all you want but we are dead-generation walking and the future always bats last.

Harley-Davidson, having had their finger on the pulse of the American motorcyclist for more than 100 years, can feel that pulse weakening. They get that Easy Rider means a mobility chair to anyone under age 50. With the Livewire H-D is busting out of the leather-fringed, concho-ed cage they so carefully crafted for themselves and it’s about time.

Electric motorcycles just make more sense than electric cars: City-centric, short range, narrow and easy to park. E-bikes comfortably fit into the existing technology envelope as it stands today. While always appreciated there’s no need for advancements in battery technology. E-motorcycles work right now, man.

Generation X, Y, and Z are down with plugging in electronics equipment wherever they go. They grew up watching battery level indicators like we grew up watching fuel gauges. They don’t have the same history or values that we have and they’d be a pretty sorry generation if they couldn’t come up with their own idea of fun.

As usual on Wild Conjecture we have no factual information on the Livewire so the first thing I noticed is that the thing actually looks good. The heavily-finned battery compartment is kind of huge so maybe range will be decent (100-miles would do it for me).  Large diameter dual discs means this may be the hardest stopping H-D yet. More than likely the rear disc will be assisted by regenerative braking because it’s fairly easy to do and adds a few miles to the range.

The rear suspension resembles Yamaha’s Monoshock system from 40 years ago except with a much shorter shock absorber. The frame appears to be cast aluminum, a construction method that eliminates costly, complicated robot welding machines and messy human interaction. Forks appear standard and I don’t see any way for the front wheel to charge the battery under braking.

One of the problems I see with electric motorcycles is that they try to be like internal combustion motorcycles. They measure their range against gasoline mileage. They pit their performance against machines that have had 100 years of refinement. For the most part they stack up so-so. E-bikes should embrace a less costly approach; give up a few miles of range and a few miles per hour for a faster charge time. Maybe cheaper, quick-change batteries so commuters could keep one at home, one at the office and one in the motorcycle thereby eliminating the wait time for charging.

The Livewire is an even bigger leap of faith for H-D than their ADV bike (which breaks no new ground) and I’m not sure it will sell out of a traditional motorcycle dealership. Maybe sell them from kiosks at Red Bull events? The Livewire should appeal to a younger audience but it’ll have to be less expensive and carry less emotional baggage than Harley’s oil burners to do it.

You can read about our other Dream Bikes here.