Harley-Davidson spins LiveWire into its own all-electric brand

 “LiveWire is more than a motorcycle,” reads the press release. “LiveWire plans to redefine electric, delivering the best experience for the urban rider, with personality and soul. LiveWire creates a unique connection between rider and vehicle. Today, the next chapter in the LiveWire journey begins.”

Harley-Davidson's five-year strategic plan, called the Hardwire, which was formulated under the leadership of new CEO Jochen Zeitz, considers electric vehicles to be one of the main pillars of the company's strategy going forward. Creating a new brand makes room for that expansion, but there are a lot of questions still to be answered. Will LiveWire fare better than Harley-Davidson's last attempt to have a distinct second brand, namely Buell? The news release says a new LiveWire electric motorcycle will be unveiled July 8, but will it be all new or just a version of the existing LiveWire motorcycle? And will the current LiveWire model now be called the LiveWire LiveWire?

From halo bike to new brand

The LiveWire — the existing motorcycle, not the new brand — is clearly a halo product, right up to its $29,799 price tag. Halo bikes don’t need to sell in large quantities if they fulfill their main job of building excitement about the brand, even among customers who aren’t going to buy the top-shelf models. The LiveWire certainly succeeded in drumming up attention for Harley’s EV efforts.

But to pay off, a halo product strategy needs to sell a bigger volume of sub-halo products at some point. Harley-Davidson showed a few EV concepts and started selling electric bicycles under their new Serial 1 brand, but the LiveWire is still the only electric motorcycle in Harley’s portfolio of brands and products. It seems essential for the company to expand its offerings into a range of electric motorcycles at different price and performance points to fulfill Zeitz's plans for Harley-Davidson to take a leading role in the electric market.

LiveWire “will be headquartered virtually," starting with "LiveWire Labs" in Silicon Valley in California and other operations in Milwaukee. The release also says that LiveWire-only showrooms will be coming, initially in California, in addition to being sold in some Harley-Davidson dealerships. On the new LiveWire Instagram page, a LiveWire motorcycle in white with the new logo is shown, free of any Harley-Davidson branding.

The most puzzling line in the LiveWire press release, to me, is one that quotes Zeitz as saying "LiveWire also plans to innovate and develop technology that will be applicable to Harley-Davidson electric motorcycles in the future.”

That reads to me like Harley-Davidson is giving their current flagship model to the new LiveWire brand, yet still planning to introduce future electric motorcycles under the H-D brand? Why split off a division, only to build the same thing in the near future? That's one of the questions still to be answered.

What will LiveWire bring?

The LiveWire brand move gives Harley-Davidson some much-needed flexibility and allows the company to keep its options open. Harley-Davidson's management has shown they're serious about electric motorcycles but also about holding onto their core customers, and many of those core customers are indifferent or antagonistic toward electric vehicles. Harley gave the new brand its best EV design and a good push, and now we'll see if LiveWire can stand on its own merits. 

And what will LiveWire do with its newfound freedom? New products must be in development. If LiveWire is going to be a stand-alone brand, it will have to introduce small- to mid-power motorcycles and pursue new target markets. How might you feel about a LiveWire engineered and designed in Silicon Valley and Milwaukee but built outside the United States so it can sell for far less than the current model's 30 grand? That would be an easier sell for a LiveWire-branded motorcycle than for a Harley-Davidson.

Then there's also a bit of separation on the retail side. Harley-Davidson went down a similar road when it acquired Buell Motorcycles and MV Agusta, two sub-brands that weren't compatible with H-D's traditional business and ended up being shut down and sold for a loss. That's not to mention the short-lived partnership with electric motorcycle maker Alta Motors. When Harley-Davidson ended its agreement with Alta, it said it was going to pursue its own course with electric motorcycles, and this appears to be it.

The brutal electric motorcycle market has more tombstones than success stories. There are still lots of questions about this effort, but we will see the first results in July.