Amid suspicions that he was simply trying to divert attention from terrible 2017 results, Harley-Davidson president and chief executive Matt Levatich subsequently told an on-line investor presentation that Harley’s Project Livewire electric motorcycle development programme was about to deliver. “It’s an active project we’re preparing to bring to market within 18 months,” he announced.
Harley-Davidson chief financial officer John Olin added that the company will spend around £35m annually over coming years on electric motorcycle technology. Presumably any production version of the four-year-old Livewire prototype will have moved on from that machine’s pathetic 50-mile battery range.
However, their fanciful goal to be “world leader in the electric motorcycle market” rather than a throwback icon for bad-ass bikers didn’t impress. “I don’t think there is a way forward for Harley,” commented Kevin Tynan, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst for the automotive industry. “Investment in the tech will be funded by a dying business and they are basically starting from scratch. Either they shrink to demand and be what they’ve always been or they sell out and pursue some weird future-mobility business model that doesn’t promise anything— even if they were capable of pulling it off.”
Following Harley’s diabolical results revelations at 8am on 30 January, a sharp sell-off on the New York Stock Exchange saw its share price fall by 8%.