Harley-Davidson CEO discusses the complexities of switching to electric

Harley-Davidson boss Jochen Zeitz says the firm aren’t ruling anything out as the motorcycle industry moves towards more sustainable practices to tackle climate change.

Speaking at an exclusive Q&A session during the firm’s recent 120th anniversary celebrations in Budapest, the Chairman, President, and CEO spoke of the difficulties facing electric design – with design teams hamstrung by the lack of storage space available onboard.

“We’re not the industry that sells trillions of cars every year,” Zeitz said. “It’s a much more niche industry in motorcycling and it’s much more complicated. It’s almost like being in the plane business,” he continued.

“Cars are relatively easy in comparison, but with motorcycles you only have two wheels, and you have less space to cram all that technology into a little battery and powertrain and then still charge it fast and go far.”

Harley-Davidson have already firmly entered the battery market, releasing the first LiveWire in 2019. This name now represents a sub-brand, selling the £22,990 LiveWire One (formerly the Harley LiveWire) alongside H-D’s combustion line-up. This is set to be joined by the S2 Del Mar.

Zeitz then moved on to discuss other potential decarbonisation options, such as eFuels, before concluding that the industry as a whole is not yet certain of how the future will look.  

“You can only invest in so many technologies and infrastructure, it’s a huge investment,” he explained. “You have an existing infrastructure with fuel so if there was an opportunity to leverage that long term… there might be something to complement electric power.”

He added: “I don’t think we know yet. There might be a shortage in precious metals and whatever and then recycling comes into play, so you don’t want to close the door on anything yet.

“From my perspective we’ve made our decision [to invest in electric] but we’re not ruling anything out especially if there is a way to use the combustion engine.”