2022 Livewire ONE

It’s only been 2 and a bit years since the original Livewire electric motorcycle was released to the public, and formerly known as part of the Harley Davidson model range. When ‘it was ‘sold’ to  form a new holding company it was given a new name: the Livewire One. 

The division responsible for has been spun off into a separate corporate entity. Unfortunately it just appears to be a corporate manoeuvre to reduce HQ debt and transfer the risk to a new legal entity and of course the funding for new development. This is confirmed by the location of the new Livewire offices aka mostly virtual locations and that there is no change to the manufacturing site. Record show they have sold 1942 units shipped since introduction and 1648 shipped to 2022. 

The transition for Harley Davidson Livewire to the Livewire One hasn’t physically changed much. That said, the most noticeable change is the removal of the Harley Davidson branding. Mechanically the Livewire hasn’t changed at all. It has only been on the market for two years and along with corporate changes I didn’t expect any. 

There many barriers to selling an electric motorcycle globally. Many parts of the world do not generate enough power to adopt them en masse, the price is still too expensive, they offer similar performance to any other sports bike in the price range, and even with the big price tag they are not considered a luxury item or even have sufficient street cred. Finally, one of the key problems is that every electric motorcycle I’ve seen is very ordinary in terms of looks and that includes the Livewire – which doesn’t help.  As a result electric motorcycles haven’t reached mainstream, the level of desirability or simply answering the why? question. Mind you fast forward ten  years and the price of petrol reaches unreasonable levels that could be a different story and the Livewire could well be the standard barer.