{"id":40524,"date":"2023-01-16T17:54:43","date_gmt":"2023-01-16T22:54:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=40524"},"modified":"2023-01-16T17:54:43","modified_gmt":"2023-01-16T22:54:43","slug":"harley-davidson-electric-motorcycles-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=40524","title":{"rendered":"Harley Davidson CEO says the brand ‘will be all-electric’ in the future"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Harley-Davidson was one of the first major motorcycle manufacturers to add electric motorcycles to its lineup last decade. It should come as no surprise then that the company\u2019s CEO Jochen Zeitz is already saying that the brand\u2019s future will be 100% electric.<\/p>\n

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It won\u2019t happen overnight but rather is likely to take decades for the bar-and-shield motorcycle company to go fully-electric.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how Zeitz described the transition in a recent interview with Dezeen<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt some point in time, Harley Davidson will be all-electric,\u201d he explained. \u201cBut that\u2019s a long-term transition that needs to happen. It\u2019s not something you do overnight.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"livewire
LiveWire S2 Del Mar electric motorcycle from H-D\u2019s electric sub-brand<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With its design heritage spanning well over a century, Harley-Davidson is of course best known for its loud, large displacement internal combustion engine (ICE)-powered motorcycles. But the company\u2019s past was also defined by constant evolution, Zeitz continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at the past 120 years, the company has always evolved, never stood still,\u201d he explained. \u201cNow, like the founders did at the time by trying to reinvent or invent something unique, that\u2019s obviously something that we as a company brand need to do as well. What we\u2019re doing is celebrating our past but also evolving the brand at the same time. It\u2019s a natural evolution that needed to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zeitz isn\u2019t afraid of making big changes, even for a brand with as rich of a legacy as Harley-Davidson.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe in big transformational change for iconic brands, which is what I\u2019ve always done in my life,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\"Harley-Davidson<\/figure>\n

The first Harley-Davidson electric motorcycle, known as the LiveWire,<\/a> first rolled into customer\u2019s garages in 2019 after the bike\u2019s 2018 EICMA debut.<\/a><\/p>\n

Harley-Davidson then decided to spin out its electric motorcycle operations under a new sub-brand, also called LiveWire<\/a>. The first model under LiveWire, the LiveWire One, was inherited from H-D\u2019s first electric motorcycle and largely just rebadged under the new sub-brand. <\/p>\n

Now LiveWire is in the process of bringing its second model to production, the LiveWire S2 Del Mar<\/a>, which is designed to be a more mass market electric motorcycle intended to reach younger, more urban riders.<\/p>\n

\"livewire<\/figure>\n

Electrek\u2019s Take<\/h2>\n

As much as some diehard old school Harley-Davidson fans would like to protest it, the fact that the brand will eventually go all-electric is a foregone conclusion. Eventually it will either be go electric or go out of business. That\u2019s not just the case for H-D, but also for all automakers that currently produce ICE-powered vehicles.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s not like it\u2019s a surprise that H-D has to go electric. What is more surprising is that the company is saying the quiet part out loud. <\/p>\n

But Zeitz has been a champion of the brand\u2019s electric aspirations since he took the reins as part of a company shakeup, and so he would be the one to speak directly without hiding behind vagueness and hyperbole. <\/p>\n

However, if we accept the idea that electrification is an inevitability, even if it takes decades to arrive, what does that mean for Harley and its sub-brand LiveWire? Does Harley-Davidson cease to exist, with LiveWire taking over all of Harley\u2019s operations? Does Harley-Davidson re-absorb LiveWire into the fold as if the spin-off never happened?<\/p>\n

It will be an awkward day of reckoning when it arrives. But make no mistake, it will<\/em> arrive.<\/p>\n

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