Not A United Front On Electrics

[Hugh Janus]

Harley-Davidson, BMW Motorrad, and Honda all have different views on the future of electric motorcycles. (Robert Martin/)

In Portland, Oregon, for the LiveWire electric bike intro, project engineer Glen Koval told me, “Electric vehicles are inevitable. They’re the future, at some point. We accept that.”

LiveWire is an expensive premium electric motorcycle but The Motor Company says, “The new LiveWire and Electric Balance Bikes (for small children) are just the beginning.” An ebicycle is coming soon, plus other electric concepts said to “reimagine the urban commute.”

At the same time, the majority of H-D’s income will clearly come from what Koval called “ICE motors” (ICE = Internal Combustion Engine) for the foreseeable future. Why? Because it is not easy to shift a business totally from one established clientele to a quite different one.

Harley-Davidson’s LiveWire project engineer sees electric motorcycles as an inevitability. (Harley-Davidson /)

Yet BMW Motorrad’s Dr. Markus Schramm said a year ago, “…electro-mobility in two-wheelers is different from the car industry. In the car sector, it’s basically government regulations which force the industry, and thereby the customer, into e-mobility.

“But in the motorcycle industry you are not forced (by government regulation) to ride electric, and therefore your decision to do so is decided by how much fun it is to ride such a vehicle. That means it’s customer driven, and so I think it’s important to direct our strategy with this in mind.”

With close to 180,000 units sold in 2019 (13,842 in the US) BMW Motorrad has set nine consecutive sales records. Its customer-driven strategy is working well.

BMW says that electric motorcycles will be a customer-driven decision, not one forced by regulation. (BMW Motorrad /)

Not that BMW offers no electric two-wheelers—when Dr. Schramm was asked about its electric scooters he said, “…on the development side we will see urban mobility products dominating, so we are going into escooters even more, and you will see more such products from BMW. We are indeed also thinking about other EV products besides scooters, but not just yet. We want to do it step by step, and the primary focus for us right now is on escooters. So, for example, I can’t imagine having an electric enduro model yet, but we’ll see!”

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On a recent trip to BMW’s test center at Miramas in the south of France, I saw a prototype electric sportbike which had been brought into existence by combining an electric motor and battery, each from a different model of BMW car. The resulting machine accelerated hard but was far from being a market-ready product.

Honda’s CEO, Takahiro Hachigo, was asked in December 2019 what Honda’s path to electrification would be.

“I believe hybrid vehicles will play a critical role. The objective is not electrification, per se, but improving fuel efficiency. And we believe hybrid vehicles are the way to abide by different environmental regulations.”

When asked about 100-percent battery-electrics, he parried with a telling question: “Are there really customers who truly want them? I’m not so sure because there are lots of issues regarding infrastructure and hardware. I do not believe there will be a dramatic increase in demand for battery vehicles, and I believe this situation is true globally.

“…I don’t believe it will become mainstream anytime soon.”

Honda CEO Takahiro Hachigo does not believe electric motorcycles will be mainstream in the near future. (Honda /)

Hachigo speaks of “infrastructure and hardware,” meaning that replacing gas stations with enough electric charging stations to support present-day traffic needs will be a long process. Charging points will require new high-current transformer stations and lines to be built, and the faster batteries can be charged, the greater the output required from high-current DC power supplies and conductors. The speed of this transition depends on its profitability: Can it earn a competitive return for investors? In the meantime, the efficiency of hybrid vehicles is keeping pace with emissions and greenhouse gas production limits.

Electric vehicles will be truly “clean” only when the present 60 percent of US electricity still produced by combustion is replaced by a renewables-driven system capable of supplying 24-hour base load. Considering the three contrasting strategies above, which future can we predict for personal transportation in general and the motorcycle in particular? We can’t say which one will be most affordable and practicable in reaching planned goals in vehicle emissions. It will be an experiment—the free market does not order society to conform to a single integrated operational plan. Let the best plan win.

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