On a charge (r)

If you were to commit to an electric Harley-Davidson, what do you reckon life would be like? We know. We've ridden it. And it ain't all roses-in-the-orange-and-black garden.

II don’t like soy milk.

Oh, I know that I SHOULD like it.

know that merely by drinking it instead of cow’s milk I could live to be a thousand years old.

I know that the simple act of becoming a soy milk user would also be good for the planet. With each sip of the white stuff a baby polar bear would be ensured a ripe run to adulthood. Blurgh.

It doesn’t taste nice. It’s not good to cook with. It’s something that’s good for me and the planet, but in reality

it’s a pale pastiche of the good stuff. I’ll stick with the fat-laden creamy goodness thanks. Until you make soy milk taste just like it.

Then, and only then, will I even consider going near soy milk again.

You can see where I’m going with this, can’t you? When HarleyDavidson sent MSL the invite to attend the world launch of LiveWire in Portland, Oregon, USA, I jumped at it. But as the time ticked down to the action on the all-electric production bike, my heart started to sink.

Just look at the hard figures to see why my balloon started to deflate: 249kg; 105hp (78kW); 146 miles range if you’re riding in the city all the time; 70- mile range at 70mph. Urgh. I say again, Urgh.

So it was with something of a heavy heart that I dutifully turned up for the ride under leaden skies in the selfconfessed ‘ weird’ city or Portland.

And a few hours later I was bloody well converted.

I’m as shocked about this as you are.

Here’s the good things about this motorcycle that I’d rave to you about, were you to ask me in a pub: “’Ere Tone, is it any good then?” I imagine you with a cockney accent. Dunno why.

Firstly, it’s all about that engine. Or motor. Or turbine. Whatever you want to call it. And the connection to the just-about-perfect throttle. I’ve yet to ride ANY bike where the power is delivered so instantaneously and in such a great way. It’s addictive and you find yourself smiling every time you crack open the right hand and belt forward. It’s genuinely like you’re sitting on a big elastic band under tension and then all that pent-up kinetic energy is released in the best and smoothest way possible. The bike might only have 86lb-ft of torque (which, to be fair is quite a bit in comparison to others in the market), but to have 100% of that available at 1rpm and have it all the way through to 15,000rpm – is brilliant.

Then there’s the riding position. For a 5’ 8” goon like me, it’s great. Feet are tucked up pretty high and sporty; the bars initially felt too narrow, but by lunchtime they were the perfect size; and the ‘tank’ is narrow and largely out of your field of vision. Being in charge of LiveWire is a pleasant place to be.

Oh, and the mirrors performed superbly. They’re not big enough and sit too low to the handlebar (this isn’t a niggle, Harley, it’s a complaint – two minutes on the bike and we’d all worked that out – who on earth has been test riding this from the factory?), but that aside, they were clear at all revs and all speeds. No combustion engine = no vibration ya see. Lovely.

Another huge plus with the bike is… well… the way it has a heartbeat. Kind of. A literal heartbeat-type of trick that it does when you’re at a standstill with the motor turned on. Obviously, the bike is completely silent when you stop, so to remind you that you are sitting on a bike – and that’s a bike with the motor turned on – Harley has made LiveWire sort of buzz underneath you every couple of seconds. It sounds weird and at the start of your time with the bike, it is weird. But you quickly get used to it. By the end of the launch ride I was actively happy when we stopped at a junction and the bike buzzed away

with one of the gears spinning up briefly every two seconds. I know I sound daft saying this, but it’s just like a heartbeat. It really is. It feels like the bike is alive.

The Showa forks and rear suspension are decent, but felt too hard. More time on the bike would have had me tuning them down a touch. The front brake felt not up to much. There wasn’t a lot of feedback from the lever and I never felt at home with it. Which is odd because I usually like the Brembo radial monobloc calipers. I can’t tell you why I didn’t this time, but I didn’t.

I like the bike’s 4.3” TFT colour display, which is touch sensitive and allows you to dial in what you want courtesy of sliding bars on the screen. It can also be tilted back and forth to suit your riding position and is great to read in dull conditions and unrelenting bright. direct sunlight. Honda, take note.

If this is sounding like a bit of a lovein, then I suppose it is. I do have some criticisms of the bike, though – and these are the reasons why I couldn’t say in all honesty that I would stump up the £28,750 asking price for this bike, PCP or no PCP.

Firstly, the charge. Harley says that if you think of this bike with a mobile phone analogy then you understand how they made it. The idea being that, like you do with a mobile, you use the bike in the day for what you need and then charge it overnight.

Ok, I’ll buy that. But we rode for probably around 70 miles on the launch. For 95% of that I had the bike in Sport Mode, and with less than eight miles to go (ish) my bike was down to 13 miles of range left. It’s the first time on a launch where I thought I might have to do something drastic to get back to the hotel.

Then there’s the lack of infrastructure of charging stations. Harley is putting a charging station in every dealership and that will have two cables to charge two bikes at the same time. This is good, but on the launch we were in Portland – a selfconfessed eco city – and with my bike getting close to critical charge levels, I didn’t see one charging station.

Until charging stations are as common and plentiful as petrol stations, how are we going to do this electric bike thing? Do we need swappable batteries instead of charging a lump overnight? It’s a bigger question, but such an important one that it’s genuinely holding me back from having one of these.

Which is a shame because I bloody love this bike. The clever app that links to the bike and tells you when it’s been moved, sending a URL locator to the cops if the bike is moved outside of a geo fence you stipulate, is great. The riding modes where you can reduce the re-gen power grab from the back wheel or dial in the bike exactly how you want are easy, well thought out and should be industry standard.

And then there’s the noise. Yes, it’s electric, but that VVVNNNRRRrrr whine from the gears that gets louder as you get faster is spot on. You don’t miss the engine noise at all. In fact, when you hear a combustion Harley amid a gaggle of LiveWires, the petrol-powered bike sounds archaic in comparison.

I’ll go back to what I said at the beginning. I’m as surprised as anyone at how much I LOVED riding this bike. But the charging universe, and LiveWire’s own run-time, isn’t yet on par with my world. And until it is, my money is still going on stinky twostrokes and 1980s petrol-propelled superbikes.

But do ride a LiveWire. I promise that you’ll be blown away by it. Especially if you don’t ride very far on a daily basis. It’s brilliant fun.