Harley Tips Episode 11

Welcome back as Motovan presents the Experience now that we’ve got you all fired up to go for a ride.. we’ll wrap up our show by looking at what Harley-Davidson is betting may be the future of our sport. Recently I had a chance to check out their Live Wire up close and personal with one of it’s engineers.

Dave

So this is great, what an opportunity to see this bike in person because I’ve been reading about it, seeing pictures in the press for well over a year… um how did this project come to be?

Yvon Carvalho

Well, Live Wire is an opportunity for us to showcase Harley-Davidson’s innovation.

Dave

Right.

Yvon Carvalho

To show the world that we can keep up with times and we do have a lot of technology that many times is overlooked on our current bikes.

Dave

Right.

Yvon Carvalho

Even though our bikes, for instance have…. The electrical structure of our bikes are state of the art, our ABS systems are, you know, really really top notch… a lot of people mistake the classic looks of the Harley-Davidson with lack of innoavation.

Dave

Right.

Yvon Carvalho

So we really wanted to showcase that and what’s better than an electric bike, right?

Dave

No kidding.  It’s such a beautiful motorcycle.  I have to say, I really love this styling.  It’s so unique.  It’s future but it’s a little retro.  I’m assuming that the guts of it, the heart and the soul of it is there’s a large battery technically there’s just a big battery in there and an electric motor? Is that…?

Yvon Carvalho

Exactly right. Most of the core of the motorcycle is a large battery- it’s a lithium ion multi-cell battery.  What you see here is actually part of the outer case of the battery so it was shaped and produced for this bike specifically, it’s not an off the shelf unit.  What you’re seeing here is the motor.  We did not want to cover the motor.  Because it’s a Harley-Davidson and when you look at any of our bikes the motor is the jewel of the bike, right.

Dave

Right.

Yvon Carvalho

Same thing with the Live Wire.  It’s not because it’s an electric bike that we’re going to hie it.  It’s still a Harley-Davidson right so we wanted to showcase the motor which is this beautiful unit here.

Dave

So of course the question motorcycle enthusiasts are going to be asking is, you know, how fast will it go and how far can I go so where is the bike in terms of that right now?

Yvon Carvalho

Acceleration is really good on this bike from zero to a hundred kilometers an hour is three point eight seconds.  It’s not meant to be a racer, it’s meant to be a really fun city bike, right? So passing power is very important, handling is very important.  For instance, talking about passing power, from a hundred to a hundred and thirty km/h is less then two seconds.  SO you don’t have a shift or a clutch.

Dave

Yeah.

Yvon Carvalho

And because it’s an electric motor there’s no such thing as falling off the power band.  You’re always at the optimum, you know power band at any time.

Dave

How far do you think you can get, what’s the range right now?

Yvon Carvalho

This one an average we’re getting is about a hundred kilometers.  Of course it will vary like any other vehicle – if you’re hard on the throttle, you’re going to probably use that charge a little faster.  We have an external charger, right, it’s not an inboard unit.  You’re just connect it to the outlet, connect it to the battery, three hours it’s fully charged.

Dave

Fantastic.  So again, everybody’s going to be asking, when can we get them, how much are they going to be, like, is there a plan to put this into production?

Yvon Carvalho

I wish I could answer that but there’s no specific dates for launching this bike, there’s no numbers in terms of retail price.  We’re still working on it, we’re getting a lot of feedback and gathering as much feedback as we can, and uh they’re working on it right now.

Dave

Okay.