Harley's decision to transition the LiveWire brand from a single model name into having a broader brand meaning is interesting on many levels.
For a start, it does call into question the extent to which the launch into the electric motorcycle sector was initially thought through. With the benefit of hindsight, we now understand just how flawed the 'More Roads' strategy document was and, in the case of the LiveWire model, it has been the pricing strategy (and range/charging) that revealed a mistaken understanding of the nature of the power that the 'Harley' brand has built up.
The original LiveWire model was predicated on a read of the Harley brand name that failed to understand the disconnect between where the brand had been for greater than 115 years and where 'More Roads' assumed it could be driven.
Who knows what the future may hold, maybe 'Harley' will be a verb one day, but at present it is 'one of many' brands, all competing for the leisure spend Dollar. It is not yet ready to be a 'Hoover', a 'Xerox' or a 'Biro'. It has a very specific meaning, it is not a category-defining portmanteau term.
That said, pricing was only one flaw. Others were misunderstanding where the Powered Two- Wheeler (PTW) cycle was in demographic and urban mobility terms, misunderstanding the rapid evolution of EV tech, and failing to fully grasp the implications of the platform's shortcomings in charging cycle and range terms - especially in the context of the present geographic distribution of its dealer network.
'More Roads' did 'visit' that latter issue, but unfortunately the launch went ahead long before plans to build an urban/suburban commuter retail network were ready. "Build the bikes and the people will buy them" doesn't cut it when the brand values 'Speak in Tongues' that ill-match the message, and when the brand is transitioning from a largely monopolistic market into one infested by shoals of sharks.
All that said, it's not that the original LiveWire was a bad bike, it was simply the wrong bike. It was wearing concrete boots in terms of its ability to 'do the job' required by its buyers - it could never be a downtowner. Downtown is an environment in which bikes get thrashed, bashed and trashed.
"second law of thermodynamics"
The average on-the-road MSRP of the kind of e-bikes (scooters and motorcycles) that define the major urban environments of places like Rome, Milan, Madrid, Paris and ultimately New York, L.A. etc., is in the region of $6,500 at most - they are largely a short-term consumable, not expected to last the rigors of their use much beyond their warranty.
With Harley's Chinese supply chain moving forward, the company has access to the kind of bottom-feeder units that make money in cities. If it wants to make sense of domestic U.S. manufacturing overheads, then it will need the kind of charging cycles that are indeed on the way, but that are still only just starting to move from labs to productionization (e.g. lithium metal solid state battery technology).
The good news is that, shorn of the baggage that drove Harley down the 'More Roads' route of blinkered vision, Jochen Zeitz and his management team now have the freedom to visualize this with an unobstructed view, and execute upon it.
Therefore, leveraging the huge brand profile that LiveWire achieved, and using it for a family of PTW, wider powersports industry and other transport solutions is a plan that has potential (shame about the logo though!).
This 'Gen II' thinking makes way more sense of 'where Harley is at' in terms of its own evolution, issues and opportunities. It makes way more sense in terms of the transport policy, demographic and, therefore, market changes and challenges that still lie ahead.
While Zero Engineering may well have grounds to take issue with Zeitz' claim that the existing LiveWire model is the top selling American made electric motorcycle (or words to that effect), as he states, the vision that Zeitz is able to embrace because rather of than despite Harley's brand heritage is the one of desirability.
Zeitz and his newly minted cohort of 'New Gen' Bar 'n Shielders are right to be eying Harley as the powersports industry's 'Apple Store' of the future. Harley is probably the only existing industry brand for whom such ambitions may not necessarily be doomed to descend into hubris, plus maybe Ducati and MV Agusta; Piaggio and Yamaha are also trying it, but theirs is a more orthodox company store mission.
Unlike the prior management iteration, Zeitz and his crew appear to realize that they couldn't do this with the existing product line of gas-powered bikes and with legacy Harley-Davidson brand values - venerable and righteous though, they definitely remain in their context.
The first LiveWire branded motorcycle is scheduled to launch on July 8, 2021 (at IMS Outdoors in California), and it is California that is the target for the first of a generation of aspirational, inspirational and motivational retail environments.
Those are not new qualities for Harley of course - they are the very stuff that the existing Harley dealer network so successfully leveraged in its heyday. But what is now needed is a parallel universe of geographically, technologically and demographically discrete, distinct and inclusive retail brand environments in which diversity of customer values replaces the homogeneous identikit that brought Harley this far.
It's not Harley's fault the world has changed, and will continue to change. It's not anyone's fault. It's just change, that's all. It always has changed, and it always will. The definition of corporate failure is to fail to adapt. Exhibit One, Your Honor - Newton's second law of thermodynamics. Case dismissed.
For me, the single most important aspect of the 'LiveWire as brand' announcement is the remarks that relate to 'LiveWire' being a brand under which new tech can be developed. That tech will then be used to inform the Harley branded product offer that will be needed for the brave new world of sustainability and wealthy Millennials. At last, someone who "gets it"!
