RideApart.com Finally States What We’ve All Been Thinking
In March of 2018, it was disclosed that Harley-Davidson had purchased part of Alta motorcycles of California. At the time it was believed that Harley-Davidson’s (HD) investment of somewhere between 30 and 50 million dollars would help HD’s research in relation to the production of smaller electric motorcycles, which it was believed would improve HD’s acceptance by present and future younger riders.
As we are all aware, six years into HD’s transition to electric motorcycles, the experience has not been like Ted and Bill’s, but it has been an adventure. Excellent? No. Disastrous? Maybe, and it started very early with its attempted acquisition of Alta Motors, as anyone who followed the saga is aware.
But diving headfirst into unknown waters without knowing what’s under the surface can break your neck, and over these years, from 2018 to the present, that’s metaphorically what HD has done. Designing an electric motorcycle requires both excellent engineering to be successful, and a ready market. As HD found out, no one was ready for a heavy $30,000 electric bike. HD’s existing loyal buyers didn’t want one, and the plan to woo a new generation of young riders to HD has failed miserably.
Reading the market has been HD’s problem for over ten years. Unwilling to adapt early to the aging demographic of existing HD owners, and assuming that the cachet of the brand would entice young, upwardly mobile buyers that, let’s face it, are a diminishing breed, – HD is now appreciably worse off. Inflation, debt, and interest rates have had a huge effect on the younger generation, (not to mention the labor market where the older generation are not making room for them due to the same market and financial realities), has led HD to lose half its customer base over the last ten years (329,776 to 162,761 in 2023).
https://www.motorcyclesdata.com/2024/03/07/harley-davidson/
On top of that, almost no one wanted a 562-pound electric bike that could only travel 84 miles on average before having to find a level 3 charger and then wait 40 minutes to get back 68 miles travel worth of charge. For that to occur would require buyers to swallow the fact that the LiveWire still costs twice as much as it should. Exhilarating though its acceleration may be, charging is a major deceleration for both interest and one’s time.
Harley expected that its loyal buyers would swallow all of this, even though HD spun off the company, which left prospective buyers wondering if this meant HD didn’t think it wanted LiveWire in its stable. No cachet, expense, dismal sales, and further failures have been the norm as the S2 Del Mar and S2 Mulholland are also experiencing serious problems, (a 100% production recall for a safety issue in Feb. 2024) while maintaining stratospheric prices compared to the competition.
What is concerning is that HD’s negative publicity is having a further effect on prospective buyers. No one who is buying a motorcycle wants uncertainty, particularly a first-time buyer. Poisoning the well, so to speak, is not going to get more people to taste it. Worse, failure in terms of safety isn’t just annoying, it could in the case of complete shutdown by the motorcycle (as is the case with the S2 motorcycles) result in serious injury or death.
And as RideApart.com suggests, motorcycles aren’t like consumer electronics or digital games. “Most video games don’t have the potential (at least on their own) to endanger the life and limb of their users if something doesn’t behave as intended. You’d think that a little more testing and refinement would be for software intended for use on, say a motorcycle.”
https://www.rideapart.com/features/711435/livewire-s2-delmar-recall-questions/
There is an interesting anomaly in HD’s financial report for 2023 in that HD only uses the term ‘shipments’ to describe its results for LiveWire products (LiveWire, 1, and S2 models). It does not, as it does for ICE motorcycles provide both ‘sales’ and ‘shipments’, leaving one to question how many LiveWire motorcycles have been sold.
Meanwhile, losses at HD for electric motorcycles continue to mount. Having invested $30 to $50 million in Alta, (now defunct) and accumulated losses of $85 million in 2022, and $117 million in 2023. And in 2024, the bleeding continues. For Q1 LiveWire lost 29 million and has a projected loss of 105 to 115 million (aggregate) for 2024.
Finally, Harley Davidson Motor Company saw its revenue decline by 29% in Q1.
In his RideApart, April 26th, 2024 article, Johnathon Klein wrote;
“All of which is to say, I’m left with a single question: When will Harley-Davidson give up on electric bikes or at least figure out it needs to completely overhaul its strategy? Because, at this point, it feels like they’re beating the already pulverized bones of a dead horse.”
And unfortunately, it’s hurting the future of Harley-Davidson Motor Company itself. However, in North America, HD is not alone in having substantive issues with sales. The difference is that other major providers of heavy motorcycles have not committed to an electric future.
Hopefully, for the diminishing Harley faithful, the company will find a way to stop the bleeding, but one statistic should stick in HD’s senior management’s heads, – that being that after six years of great expense, Harley-Davidson shipped and sold 117 electric motorcycles of all kinds in Q1 of 2024.
Time is running out.
Thanks to RideApart.com for the photo and its affiliated article of April 26, 2024.
Ciao…
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