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[Richard230]

Apparently, the more Harley motorcycles cost the better their customers like them. But not so much their electric LiveWire models:
https://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/harley-davidson-strong-livewire-less-so

What I found interesting is that LiveWire sold 275 bikes during the first half of this year. Revzilla says that is the most electric motorcycles sold in the U.S. so far this year. That makes me wonder how many Zero and Energica bikes are being sold here.    Those kind of sales numbers you wouldn't think would keep a factory open for very long unless sales in other countries around the world are much more robust.

[Specter]

That is a good point there.  To be honest, I have never really seen any Energica advertisement in the USA.  I happened to stumble across them while searching for electric motorcycles on the internet, and then finding their site.  Don't get me wrong, I really love their bikes and think of them all, they are the best BUT holy shit, you have to do a bit better on the advertisement.  Word of mouth is not going to cut it for much longer.

What about professional sales?  Like selling police bikes to government entities?  Do they count those as overall sales, because I know the experia has been done up as a police bike and is being sold pretty well.

Im sure Energica is doing a lot better overseas, because well, they are a bit more crazier overall on the 'green shit' than the USA is, so they are having a better market there, especially since they are not advertising in the USA.

Do their annual reports show how many bikes a company has sold?  I remember someone putting up a graph somewhere at one time, but yah that'd be interesting to see what they overall sales are.

Energica really does not have a huge marketing footprint either in the US,  they have what?  A dozen tops dealers nation wide?  Not that it'd help a super lot, because in Oklahoma they are really not keen on the whole electric stuff like they are in Cali and Florida as an example, so why put a dealer somewhee that's destined to essentially fail?  It's a touchy market, and even more now that the economy world wide,is really in the shitter.

I just really hope that the ones that are still around, can hold out a few more years, Id really hate to see us lose any of them, and honestly, once we get more chargers up, I think you will see people warm up to them more.  However to be honest, charging a bike overnight is a LOT easier than trying to charge up a car overnight at home.

Aaron

[Stonewolf]

So here in the UK it's important to realise our economy is fucked hard and represents a more extreme version of trends elsewhere but ...

The numbers for >35kW BEV motorbike registrations were:
2019: 52
2020: 97 (86.5% vs -2.6% for all bikes)
2021: 133 (37.1% vs 9.3%)
2022: 121 (-9% vs 1.9%)
<Truss-o-nomics conceptually here>
2023: 58 (-50%* vs -2.5%)
2024 June YTD: 23 (-34.3% vs -0.7%)

Generally, it can be said economic pressure is driving down BEV sales instead of the simplistic read of "EVs failing, haha lol gas forever" and this goes even more for bikes where the price differential is still stark. Incidentally that drop in 2022? The government dropped the cap on sticker price grants for BEV motorbikes from £1500 to £500 and interestingly Energicas cost the same as they did at the start of 2022 today even though inflation has made that £5k cheaper in real terms.

Harley did have a fun statistical anomaly earlier this year where they got a crate of S2s in and for one month 7% of all Harleys sold in the UK were Del Mars but there was another month where I think 1 bike was sold on the >35kW category and MCN ran a story headlining how EV motorbikes were failing. That should tell you everything you need to know about the scale of sales here that a single shipment (or lack of one) can distort the statistics.

https://mcia.co.uk/press-statistics

Energica doesn't have the budget to advertise and speaking to their UK distributor generally views the motorcycling press as a net detriment to sales. Their UK distributor prefers to work with influencers rather than moto journalists because influencers both tend to give them better reviews and also more accurate reporting on the bikes capabilities. This has on occasion backfired like Teapotone's four corners run but generally is a positive. Experia is probably keeping them going at the moment with its fleet sales, I think a lot of people were scratching their heads about it when it launched but police fleets already buy big expensive bikes, have a very good idea of what their mileage needs actually are, have an established replacement cadence, and at least here in Europe have their paymasters breathing down their necks going "so what's the carbon output of that thing?".

* The 2023 statistics and 2022 statistics disagree on the 2022 numbers for some reason

[TheRan]

That 35kW cut-off is unfortunate as it excludes all of the 7.2 Zeros sold during that time (33kW), along with all of the other bikes that can be ridden on an A2 licence or with L plates. So yeah those numbers should be even better.

Apparently, the more Harley motorcycles cost the better their customers like them. But not so much their electric LiveWire models

People will pay ridiculous amounts for Harleys because they're Harleys, Livewires are not that. They don't even have the brand name to throw around anymore, but even with that the Harley Livewire wasn't loud and attention grabbing enough for the Harley market. It looked fairly similar to a Sportster but the big difference is you didn't get everyone turning around and looking at you when you started it up in the middle of a carpark.

[Stonewolf]

Their reporting categories mostly follow the licencing categories so you have <4kW, 4-11kW, 11-35kW, and 35+kW with and "other" category for stuff like self-builds and conversions (because MCIA is an industry association). To summarise from memory the scoot category is going very well and has been for years, the A1 category does less well but generally posts good numbers, the full power category is heavily dependant on economic trends, and the A2 category was fairly dead until the CE-04 came along.

I don't think that's particularly surprising tbh, A2 has always been a sort of odd middle child and skews heavily towards younger less wealthy riders.

[TheRan]

I just meant that the vast majority of electric motorcycles fall into that A2 and lower category. It's not about specifically making bikes to go into that category like it is with gas bikes, because it doesn't take much to get an engine over 47hp, it's because smaller and less powerful motors, batteries, and controllers are cheaper.

[Stonewolf]

They also break down ICE bikes by the even more arbitrary classification of how big the engine is.

I cherry picked the >35kW category specificly because we opened by talking about larger, expensive bikes and in terms of recreational motorcycling that category is always going to rule the roost. It's also important to consider that the lowest two power categories are both individually an order of magnitude more than the top two combined. Most of the action in BEV motorbikes is scoots, electric dirt bikes, and small cheap A1 machines that are more aimed as runabouts rather than the recreational market.

[Stonewolf]

I did some charts.
Sorry for lumping in A1 and A2 in the percentage of sales by category chart, there's a change in the breakdown of ICE numbers that make it hard to fudge an A2 number out of it which is already a hard fudge anyway. Anything under 125cc can reasonably easily be categorised as A1 though.

Chart 1: The mix of sales of different power levels as a percentage of the whole of electric bike sales.
Chart 2: The percentage of sales compared to total sales in the category (All bikes, A1 EVs vs sub 125cc ICE, A2+A EVs vs over 125cc ICE)

[hotsauce]

That 35kW cut-off is unfortunate as it excludes all of the 7.2 Zeros sold during that time (33kW), along with all of the other bikes that can be ridden on an A2 licence or with L plates. So yeah those numbers should be even better.

Apparently, the more Harley motorcycles cost the better their customers like them. But not so much their electric LiveWire models

People will pay ridiculous amounts for Harleys because they're Harleys, Livewires are not that. They don't even have the brand name to throw around anymore, but even with that the Harley Livewire wasn't loud and attention grabbing enough for the Harley market. It looked fairly similar to a Sportster but the big difference is you didn't get everyone turning around and looking at you when you started it up in the middle of a carpark.

The issue here in the US at least was thought to be that a venn diagram of "people who want Harleys" and "people who want electric motorcycles" was two circles about 10 miles away from each other, which is why they spun out the Livewire brand. Personally I think that most people interested in an electric motorcycle would have been fine with a Harley badge on it but not for $30,000. The Livewire One price point is much more reasonable, but most people I've seen talk about it outside electric motorcycle circles think it still costs $30K

[DonTom]

That makes me wonder how many Zero and Energica bikes are being sold here.    Those kind of sales numbers you wouldn't think would keep a factory open for very long unless sales in other countries around the world are much more robust.

In the two years A&S were selling Energicas, they sold one on the first day--to me. That was all they could unload of ANY of the Energicas. But they did ship one up to Oregon, but I think A&S was only involved in the shipping, I don't think it was a bike they sold from there. They never had an Experia in stock, but they had the other three which never sold in two years or so.


-Don-  Reno, NV

[Specter]

Thats sad to hear because my dealer can't seem to keep any energica's in stock.  Unfortunately they don't seem to get back in stock very fast either  lately. Ive been wanting to try out one of the experia's but as soon as the damned thing gets in, it's back gone again.

Aaron

[Stonewolf]

I get the impression demand for Experia was much higher than expected and for whatever reason (perhaps their parent company being broke) they've not had the ability to ramp up production to keep pace.

[Specter]

Now that I heard this about the parent company, I know some of the details which I won't start drama here but yah, it is NOT their fault they are behind on the production of bikes and delivering parts and stuff.  I just hope they can weather thru this.

Maybe there is a way they can sell stock to their customers?  Now that parent got booted off the nasdac, they are back to what open shares, or shit, i cant remember what that is called now, OTC?   They need to divest from those clowns if they can, and do what they can to pick up the pieces but since the shit bags still hold a majority of their stock, they can strangle them.  Lets see how this shakes and pray for the best, it'd be a horrible day for the motorcycle world if they went under because of this shit.  ANY of the e bikes going under would be a sad day, we need all the support we can get until they get a solid foot and going strong.

Aaron