First ride: Harley-Davidson electric LiveWire

The ‘Motor Company' name finally rings true! Yes, Harley-Davidson really has a ‘motor' – and not just an ‘engine' - in its midst with the development of the Project LiveWire electric bike, which is a big deal for a company that has hitherto based itself on an orthodox cruiser path.

But Project LiveWire marks a radical departure from that, and it has the potential to embrace a much larger proportion of the population than Harley-Davidson already does now. Yes, I hear you: Harley-Davidson is already doing pretty well with its current cruiser fare, but Project LiveWire is something else - the company is out of its comfort zone and the possibilities are enourmous.

More specifically, Project LiveWire has the potential to embrace more women and a younger demographic, places where H-D has declared it has to make more inroads (although the percentage of female riders has rocketed in recent years with a series of targeted marketing campaigns).

“America at its best has always been about reinvention,” said Matt Levatich, President and Chief Operating Officer, Harley-Davidson Motor Company. “And, like America, Harley-Davidson has reinvented itself many times in our history, with customers leading us every step of the way. Project LiveWire is another exciting, customer-led moment in our history.”

But I'm jumping the gun: before a decision on if and when Project LiveWire will go into full-scale production, the bike (or a batch of them that Harley-Davidson has produced) is currently doing the rounds in America as part of a massive dealer demo tour, seeking feedback from customers across all parts of the machine, from styling, performance, handling et al – including we presume “just the general vibe of the thing.”

The tour will continue in Europe and Canada in 2015, but Australia hasn't been factored in as yet – although we'd like to think plans are afoot to sneak one over to our shores sometime soon.

Harley-Davidson's thrives on customer feedback – it's the key pillar of Project Rushmore – and there's no doubt it will listen to every brickbat and bouquet that comes the way of Project LiveWire before a final production decision is made.

Bikesales got the chance to sample the LiveWire prototype in Los Angeles just last weekend, at the tail end of a media launch to sample the 2015 range of Harley-Davidsons (report coming soon). And I have to thank the Harley-Davidson employee who had to hang around at the company's fleet centre until late Saturday afternoon waiting for us to arrive – while his family had already made a bee line out of town for the Labor Day long weekend…

The test track wasn't an epic - a three-mile circuit around an industrial estate in LA – but the taste test was enough validation to say that this bike is, in a sense, already production-ready. It's refined, high quality and doesn't have the rough edges of a ‘traditional' prototype, probably because potential customers from all over America are going to be riding it and don't want to be turned off by poor finish.

You can tell that Project LiveWire has been engineered by a motorcycle company that knows what it's doing, and the chassis includes a cast aluminium frame and swingarm and CNC-machined bits and pieces. Project Livewire is also quite small in the flesh, with an extremely narrow waist and a long ‘tank'. But it's not an onerous reach to the bars, producing quite a neutral riding position. The seat height is also quite low.

They were my first impressions, but then I had to invite Project LiveWire into action, which is done via traditional H-D switchgear. The first step is to turn the power on, and the rider is eventually led to a choice of two modes – Range or Power – which can be activated via the TFT LED display. Then it's just a matter of hitting the ‘start' button.

Because there were quite a few of us sampling LiveWire, battery life was paramount and Range was the mode of choice. A bit of a shame, but the longitudinally mounted motor, mounted under the frame, still has plenty of fizz and really starts stretching its legs about the 30mph mark – and before you know it there's 70mph on the speedometer. Livewire is electronically limited to 95mph.

I'd imagine Sport mode would have Livewire frothing at the mouth from the get-go with the full 71Nm available from zero ‘revs', which would be quite the tyre-screeching experience. Like the Zero SR we rode a few months back, LiveWire is not inhibited by all the inertia and rolling mass of an internal combustion engine, which creates its own form of vitality and freedom. It really is intoxicating.

LiveWire's powertrain runs a bevel gear, which changers the direction of rotation 90 degrees before meeting up with a final belt drive. The bevel gear produces a distinctive jet turbine-like ‘whirring' noise, particularly on deceleration. Regenerative braking is quite strong as well, and if you're pulling up at a stop sign or traffic lights at a sedate speed the twin-piston front brakes just about become superfluous.

LiveWire belies its 210kg carriage, because its feels lighter than that and the steering is quite sharp – well, as much as I could garner on the short circuit. The suspension, which includes a cantilever shock, is firm at both ends so twisty roads and hard braking shouldn't tie it in knots. It would have been fun on the Californian coastal road the day before…

We know a lot about LiveWire, but the powertrain is still the unknown part -- the part that really makes or breaks electric fare. Harley is coy about the motor and battery supplier – or they could be two suppliers – and as it currently stands the bike takes about 210 minutes to charge with a 220-volt plug. Battery capacity is also an unknown, but I can tell you that after about 10 laps of the LA street circuit capacity had dropped from about 95 to 30 per cent – and all that in the lower performance Range mode.

The battery is lithium-ion, and if and when Harley-Davidson decides to take LiveWire into production battery technology may have already taken a quantum leap. So in a sense you can understand Harley's reticence to divulge too much information, as today's proclamations may mean very little in 3-5 years' time.

By that time technology may have taken away a lot of the ‘range anxiety' associated with electric bikes. And even so, Harley would be wise to allow new purchasers to retrofit updated batteries as technology continues its inexorable pace.

And a likely purchase cost? That probably depends on potential advances as discussed above, so it's probably madness to even talk price at this stage.

But as it stands, LiveWire is an impressive piece of kit. It's great to see another established manufacturer taking the electric route, as start-ups like Zero are really starting to make inroads, not so much from a performance angle but getting on top of chassis design.

To that end, Harley's timing could be impeccable, and with an established and much-loved company nameplate behind it LiveWire has already got a fair dollop of cachet on its side. Now we wait to see what the future holds.