I had to dive back into the A&R archive to find out that Triumph and Bajaj first announced their intent to partner on middleweight motorcycles almost exactly two years ago.
Details were light at the time of the announcement, and few specifics have surfaced since…until today…sort of. This is because news out of India tells us that Triumph and Bajaj are aiming to have a formal agreement signed in Q3 of this year.
Starting this month, BMW Motorrad will have a new name leading the direction of its motorcycle lineup, as Christof Lischka will take over as head of BMW Motorrad Development from Karl Viktor Schaller, who is retiring after fives years in the role.
As such, this means that Lischka will be responsible for finding the white spaces in BMW Motorrad’s product lineup – looking for opportunities in new segments and sectors, while also analyzing and refining the offerings that BMW already has on the showroom floors.
While the rest of the industry walks on pins and needles, the Piaggio Group is celebrating a strong first-half to the 2019 sales year, with overall unit sales up 9.2%.
That number isn’t just all Vespa scooters though (however, the Italian brand does sell quite a few of those), as Piaggio reports that its motorcycle sales saw a 14% bump in gross revenue.
The Italian conglomerate pegs the new Moto Guzzi V85 TT for the sales boom over last year, which is quite a feat since 2018 was a strong year for the Piaggio Group as well.
The motorcycle industry in the United States needs to attract new riders. This is a well-established fact, and we have already begun to see manufacturers catching on to this idea – most notably, Harley-Davidson with its “More Roads” business plan.
Now, the Motorcycle Industry Council (MIC) is rallying the troops to the cause, announcing a new long-term initiative to bring in new riders.
Western brands partnering with Chinese companies is all the rage right now in the motorcycle industry, and the latest to follow this trend is MV Agusta.
Announcing today that MV Agusta will build 350cc to 500cc motorcycles with the help of the Loncin Motor Company, the Italian marque is gearing up to release a four-model family of small displacement machines.
Today we report some more business movement in the helmet space, as the French brand Shark has acquired the Italian brand Nolan.
The transaction actually involves the two brands parent companies, 2Ride Holding Group (Shark, Bering, Ségura, Bagster, and Cairn) and the Nolan Group (Nolan , Grex, and X-lite helmets), with the French business unit buying its Italian counterpart.
The acquisition sets up a strong European house of brands in the motorcycle industry, which should be positioned well to compete against other players like Alpinestars and Dainese/AGV with head-to-toe protection.
Sales continue to slip and fall for Harley-Davidson, as we see from the company’s second-quarter earnings report, which was was released today. Worldwide, the Bar & Shield brand saw an 8% drop in Q2 sales for 2019, when compared to Q2 2018.
This breaks down to an 8% drop in sales for the United States, with international sales showing a similar decline of 8.9%. For comparison, the relevant heavyweight motorcycle industry was down 4.9% in the USA during the same time periods.
On the dollar side of the equation, Harley-Davidson reported a net income of $195.6 million earned, from a consolidated revenue of $1.63 billion in Q2 2019.
This is nearly a 20% drop in net income, when compared to the $242.3 million that Harley-Davidson made on the $1.71 billion in consolidated revenue in Q2 2018.
This news continues an obvious trend for Harley-Davidson, as its sales continue to shrink each year, which is affecting the company’s bottom line earnings.
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.
On Tuesday, the Volkswagen Group struck a major deal with its union-back workforce, which will see the German automotive conglomerate begin a new restructuring plan.
The linchpin for the restructuring plan is a €1 billion commitment to make a new battery factory for future electric vehicle models, which will be located in Lower Saxony.
This is important because Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess has been on a mission to slim down the VW Group, but his workforce, more specifically its labor unions, have been resistant to this change, as it would inevitably mean fewer jobs for its labor force.
Now with a substantial commitment to create jobs in the battery cell production space, VW’s labor unions are more amenable to the idea of trimming VW’s non-core businesses, which has some big implications.
Call it the British Connection, because four firms from the United Kingdom have just agreed to partner on making electric two-wheelers and associated technologies.
The collaboration is going to be a two-year deal between Triumph Motorcycles, Williams Advanced Engineering, Integral Powertrain Ltd.’s e-Drive Division, and WMG at the University of Warwick.
Additionally, the group will receive funding from the UK government’s Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and the Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) via Innovate UK.
As you might expect, the goal of the partnership is to develop and bring to market technologies that will help power the next generation of motorcycles, namely electric motorcycles.
The 2019 model year is looking good for Ducati, with the Italian brand reporting a 5% sales increase in the first quarter of this year, over the same time period in 2018.
In total, Ducati sold 12,541 motorcycles in Q1 2019, compared to the 11,949 units it moved in Q1 2018, with most segments from the Italian manufacturer showing growth.
That growth was highlighted with strong sales for Hypermotard 950, though it is bookended with the superbike segment, which saw a noticeable drop (13.5%) at the start of this year.