MACPHERSON
You know the world is changing when Harley-Davidson introduces a nearly silent electric motorcycle,
You know the world is changing when Harley Davidson introduces a nearly silent electric motorcycle.
No motorcycle company is as immersed in tradition, and in sound, as Harley Davidson. For a little more than 100 years, Harleys have been defined by their thunderous V-twin engines. When people complain about noisy motorcycles, this usually is what they’re talking about. That galloping drum beat is Harley’s audible trademark.
On any list of motorcycle companies likely to offer an electric model, Harley Davidson, until this week, would have been at the bottom. This is a company that still offers the Sportster, a model introduced in 1957 and produced continuously ever since. At the other end of Harley’s current lineup is the mighty FL series of long-distance touring bikes, introduced in 1941 and still going strong. If these bikes could speak, they would be saying, “What the hell?” An electric Harley Davidson showroom is as unexpected as a hipster riding with the Hells Angels.
While everyone else makes a big deal of it, Harley Davidson, wisely, is more circumspect. The company is not promoting its electric motorcycle as a replacement for the historic V-twin, or even as a future replacement. The company’s senior executives are not referring to the in- ternal combustion engine as “legacy” technology, always the kiss of death. Rather, the new Harley Davidson LiveWire was introduced more as an experiment than a change in direction. If reaction is favourable, the battery-powered bike could be for sale by 2016.
As they say on Sesame Street, one of these things is not like the others. For starters, the LiveWire looks more like a European sport bike than a Harley, but with no exhaust pipes.
Also missing is the clutch lever on the left handgrip and the shift lever under the rider’s left toe. The LiveWire has no transmission. The electric engine reportedly delivers abundant power, without ever shifting, from zero RPM.
All you can hear, reportedly, is a mechanical, turbine- like whine from the bevelled gears connecting the driveshaft to the back wheel.
Performance is said to be impressive in all respects but two: range and recharge time.
The LiveWire will take you only about 90 kilometres before it needs to be plugged in. A Harley Sportster with the tiniest peanut tank will go twice that far, and you can fill it up almost anywhere in two minutes.
Recharging the LiveWire takes more than three hours and requires a special, 220volt charging station at an initial cost approaching $1,000, plus installation by an electrician. On the other side of the equation, electric drivetrains are all but maintenance free. When was the last time you paid a mechanic $100 an hour to work on your furnace motor that runs 18 hours a day all winter?
What we are seeing here is the electric vehicle arriving in the automotive mainstream. If Harley Davidson is getting into electrics, you have to take them seriously.
What worries me about electric bikes, and cars, is the sound. There isn’t any, or at least nothing that compares with the clattering rumble of an internal combustion engine.
People who have ridden electric performance motorcycles, some of which have exceeded 300 kilometres per hour, are thrilled by the quiet power delivery. Others compare the sound to that of a fork lift.
The problem is that pedestrians won’t hear an electric vehicle coming. This might not matter on the road, where pedestrians always are alert (as if), but it will make parking lots more dangerous. We all have been startled by someone carelessly backing out of a parking spot. Often it is the sound of the car starting or shifting into gear that alerts us. Electric vehicles provide no such warning.
Before too many people are run over like this, safety authorities will intervene. Electric vehicles then, by law, will be equipped with a back-up beeper, like heavy machinery.
If electric vehicles catch on in a big way, we are all going to hear a lot more beeping. The incessant beeping of electric cars backing up could well become the prevailing feature of the modern urban soundscape.
Then we will yearn for the good old days of noisy motorcycle pipes.