Tomorrow we will be among the first to ride the Harley-Davidson Livewire, the Bar & Shield brand’s first electric motorcycle.
The model marks a paradigm shift for the American company, as well as the motorcycle industry as a whole, so you can imagine that a great deal of attention will be on the machine’s debut.
Before we get our own first-hand experience with the bike, there is some talk about Harley-Davidson’s pre-sales activity on the Livewire.
BMO Capital Markets analyst Gerrick Johnson has tipped to Powersports Business that roughly 50% of Harley-Davidson’s initial batch of Livewire deliveries have deposits on them.
According to Johnson, about 100 dealerships in the United States will carry the Livewire motorcycle, though the Bar & Shield brand revealed in its own press release that the dealership figure is closer to 200.
Assuming that his information is then still correct, the analyst goes on to say that most dealerships are placing initial orders of less than five bikes, and that 50% of those orders have deposits on them from customers.
At $29,799 a pop MSRP, it shouldn’t surprise us to hear that Harley-Davidson will be likely counting sales on the Livewire in the hundreds, not thousands of units sold.
Though depending on your expectations on the Livewire, that number can sound impressive, or underwhelming.
When the price tag of nearly $30,000 was released, there was sizable pushback from the motorcycle community against Harley-Davidson and the Livewire, especially when compared to previous electric offerings from other brands.
What Harley-Davidson has failed to communicate though is the exclusive nature of the Livewire, which is more inline with the company’s CVO lineup of machines, rather than its more popular models.
The Harley-Davidson Livewire represents Milwaukee’s first electric model, not its last, and they have taken the approach seen by others in this space of creating a halo product first, before developing a more mass market motorcycle.
The real question for us tomorrow then is whether the Harley-Davidson Livewire lives up to the hype, and if this iconic American brand can learn how to sell an electric motorcycle to a new generation of rider. More on that in the coming days.
Source: Powersports Business
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