Gentlemen, start your engines. Wait, are those engines actually on? It’s not normally difficult to tell with a Harley Davidson, but the LiveWire isn’t your typical Harley. We heard back in November that the company’s first electric motorcycle would be getting priced and dated in January 2019 and well, would you look at the time?
If you have your heart set on a Harley that won’t wake the neighbours, you can expect to see them on the road from August this year. Assuming you live in the States or Europe, as South Africa’s not on the invite list yet. Even if you are somewhere you can have one at launch, it’s going to cost you. The LiveWire starts from R420,000 or so ($29,800), which is a lot to pay for a vehicle that will almost certainly be used mainly as a commuter bike.
That’s down to the range, though. The LiveWire still doesn’t have an officially official range but it’s listed as having an estimated (with a prominent *) range of 110 miles. That’s about 177km and that’s based on the vehicle prototype. We’d hope that Harley Davidson can squeeze a little more kms from its bike, perhaps enough to push it over the 200km mark for the production model. Acceleration, on the other hand…
The LiveWire will top 100km/h in just 3.5 seconds. As the company points out, there are no gear changes to get to that point so you might be leaving more than one sort of skidmark when you open the throttle. It may be wise to go easier on the acceleration after breakfast.
The bike will also feature Harley’s H-D Connect service, an app that lets users remotely check up on the bike’s status via LTE. Service notifications, battery status, GPS location and even whether it’s been bumped will be part of the package. Harley Davidson says that H-D Connect won’t be available everywhere though — we’re going to have to wait till August to find out which locations are getting it. Great, more waiting.