Why Are Electric Motorcycles Struggling So Much? – The Lowdown Show Ep 1
Welcome to episode one of the lowdown show I’m Neil Graham my guest is Michael ulic an international award-winning motorcycle designer product planner Market analyst and the founder of motorcycle Global during his 25-year career he’s worked for Yamaha pagio ailia BRP Damon potential Motors as well as consulted for more than a dozen other
Manufacturers his work and Analysis have been featured in the glob and mail Reuters wired the New York Times online and in most International Motorcycle trade Publications despite his professed love of electrification Michael drives a VW vanan and curiously a Chrysler Cordoba he’s based in Halifax Canada but before
We dive into the show a word from our sponsor eBay Motors is here for the ride with some elbow grease fresh installed and a whole lot of love you transformed 100,000 miles and a body full of rust into a drive that’s all your own break kits LED headlights whatever you need
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Straight into it electrification motorcycle electrification I find fascinating for so many reasons and I know this is sort of your sweet spot so lately there’s been a whole bunch of high-profile uh implosions of electric companies can you take us through some of that and then we’ll just let the
Conversation unfold from there sure I I mean it is a a Hot Topic uh not least of which because there have been uh a number of you know uh companies that have struggled struggling and you know last month that being the beginning of 2024 uh cake um folded which was a very
High-profile if fairly small manufacturer from from Europe and you know we’re at the tail end of you know sort of the the big beginning of electrification like it’s it’s electric cars have been normalized it’s it’s completely embedded into mainstream in the developing world in the western world that electric cars are
Real they’re they’re a thing maybe not for everyone but but nobody disputes that that they’re a main a major part of the business on two wheels uh there was an enormous amount of energy and expectation about four years ago pre- pandemic uh and during the pandemic it actually accelerated uh enormous amounts
Of money were invested into electric vehicle startups like you know hundreds of billions but on the two wheel side um you know many billions were spent on electrifying two wheels and you know most of the brands that people read about in magazines like wired or online
You know that were all over the internet from 2020 to very recently um have struggled or gone out of business now now why is that and this is the thing that I find sort of curious is that is this one of these cases where manufacturers were so far ahead or these
Startups were so far ahead of where the market was that that there’s this disconnect because it seems like we’re at the we’re at the Advent of something and yet already everything is collapsing or is that just what happens when a new technology is is introduced is that a
Normal thing uh I would say the answer the short answer is yes it is a normal thing um were the manufacturers ahead of the consumer no um so this leads broadly into the sort of bifurcation of of electrification on two wheels there were a lot of Legacy Brands and by
Legacy I mean brands that have been making motorcycles for many many decades uh the names most people be familiar with the Japanese labels like Honda and Yamaha Etc um European Brands BMW KTM ducatti and then you know Harley Davidson they all dabbled in it um mostly at a very very limited showcase
Level uh with some notable exceptions from like BMW and Harley um their products were not ahead of the consumer their products were very much in line with what their consumers were already buying on the combustion side the startups all tried to be to use their phrase
Disruptive um and for the most part they all went into Technologies or markets or niches where there hadn’t pre previously really been a market um and you know kind of basic business rules are you you know if you’re going to try and sell something make sure somebody’s out there
Who wants to buy the thing you you’re you’re trying to sell um and I my thesis on this and I think the evidence is strong to support it is that uh they were largely selling products that nobody wanted which takes us to cake and of
Course I have to say you can’t have your cake and eat it too because we have to touch on every cliche um can you take us through cake and what happened and a little bit about the company and then what happened because there was a lot of hype surrounding this brand yes there
Was and and I did a pretty uh thorough uh investigation of cake when the news came out in February that the the company was filing for bankruptcy there was an initial wave of of shock and surprise from most of the media media uh especially in the motorcycle side and Mobility side like
This company was everywhere from a media standpoint for six years um so their Swedish company founded in the sort of just before the pandemic hit and they were founded by this serial entrepreneur who describes himself as a Storyteller first and foremost uh that’s his training he doesn’t have he’s not an engineer he’s
Not a you know formal trade businessman and he had crafted this this company around this Scandinavian design uh cliche uh you know everything was very very clean and sort of you know these these frosted Grays and whites and a tremendously successful brand building exercise really good visuals really good
Communications and you know they were sending out a press relase monthly basically um and something significant every quarter and they were they were the darling of the sort of Mobility you know Literati um what happened was they just didn’t move product um in total they sold less than 6,000 vehicles and now
6,000 is not nothing but after you know six or eight years that’s not a lot $75 million they raised and you know built six uh shops like Standalone like boutique stores to retail them from had all these big announcements about selling 300,000 vehicle letter of uh
Letter of intent with a company in Spain and pardon me in Mexico and in China and Factory deals and this and that you know supporting you know initiatives environmental initiatives and stuff like this but at the end of the day they they weren’t profitable and some would say
Well that’s normal in startups sure but their burn rate which is how much money they burn monthly to you know to compensate for this was just extremely high um then they had unfortunately two pretty catastrophic recalls uh battery failure so total battery replacement on their Flagship
Product and then on every one that was ever built and then a structural frame suspension component failure on their largest volume seller and because they were direct as consumer which means that they you bought the bike where wherever you were in the world directly from their website and they sent it to you
Individually meant that they had to individually recall all of those Vehicles wherever they were and offer you with a complete replacement or refund and they couldn’t do that now when you say they burned through a lot of money can you give us sense of how much money is how much money 75 million
US 60 million euro over you know four years it’s a not a lot of money in Automotive in motorcycle that’s a staggering amount of money you’re listening to the lowdown show presented by advv rider.com and supported by ebaymotors.com given Michael given these high profile failures cake I mean what would it have
Taken for cake to be successful in your view so I think this is Germaine to the conversation RIT large about um electric motorcycles or motor electric motorcycle startup failures what cake did successfully was unique what they did that ultimately caused them to fail is common among most of
These um high-profile or just generally most of the EV motorcycle startup failures it’s basic industry boilerplate business um cake failed because they didn’t have adequate experience operating a business in this industry the battery failure that can happen to anyone it happens unfortunately you know electrification is still fairly new it doesn’t happen a
Lot but it it it can happen so fine but having uh to recall a motor vehicle every manufacturer has to do that if you don’t have a plan in place resources and personnel with experience to identify these kind of potential pitfalls and have a plan of what to do if that happens
We know in the case of cake because I specifically reached out to the suppliers and I I interviewed the CEO the CTO a number of other employees who chose to remain off record and I talked to the suppliers the suppliers told cake that in the case of the the frame and
Suspension failure that their design was weak and that they chose to use aluminum steering tube instead of a steel one and you know when your supplier who supplies Honda and Suzuki and other manufacturers who works in the industry says hey you know um this is a this is going to be
Problematic and you don’t listen to them because you know better because you’re disruptive um and then it blows up in your face I have very little sympathy for you um they didn’t employ a single person with any motorcycle engineering experience not not one um they had very limited engineering
Period they were you know 2/3 of the of the staff were in marketing and branding and sales and that’s all you got to know it’s Motor Vehicles so what can we learn from cake that you know we can extrapolate onto a lot of these other startups that are not doing so
Well you can innovate you can be disruptive you can change the way you sell the vehicle or the propulsion system but at the end of the day it’s still a motor vehicle it’s still a motorcycle it still behaves on bumpy roads and in the rain and you know under
Extreme loads the way any other motorcycle will and therefore you’re going to have the same problems come up one way the other don’t reinvent the wheel when you don’t have to and it seems like there’s a degree of of sort of human huous in this which is that
They seem to get so caught up in being new and different that they forget they actually have to make a thing that that a motorcycle company is actually not just an Instagram account yeah I would agree and you know if you look at for example the this table that I that I
Shared um which is a by no means complete list of but it’s a list of companies that would be familiar to anyone who’s following the motorcycle sort of innovators and Mobility Innovation space you know half of these companies are dead having delivered nothing or very little um burned through
Enormous amounts of capital that list alone is a billion dollars of investment um and the number of vehicles delivered is very small um some of them are laughably I mean there are two companies here that are would be categorized by any business leader as a zombie company they exist
Because they keep coming back for money um but I haven’t made any any profit and and that would be zero and and and Livewire nay Harley-Davidson hundreds of millions of dollars spent to make pretty small numbers of vehicles and and you know the the reason for these failures
Generally speaking is not following some pretty fundamental Lessons Learned over 130 years that Humanity has been making motorcycles successfully um very few people brought in from the outside from outside the disruptor view but actually from industry from Europe from Japan from Asian countries where there is a
Deep talent pool um not listening to supply not listening to the market um you know and some of these Brands like people will know Mission Motors was everywhere for years this was the future it’s on Jay Leno’s garage it’s on every magazine cover it’s you know it’s winning
Awards you know brammo was the same Alta was the same people wax on about how wonderful these products were but they ultimately they weren’t they weren’t wonderful products they burned through enormous amounts of capital they ruined people’s lives um who worked at those companies um not the people who own them
The bikes I mean and um and in the end they the the products failed so um it is hubris it is the arrogance to think you can do better than a company that makes 10 million motorcycles a year or 20 million motorcycles a year or has been in business for 75 years globally
Profitably um that’s pretty dump so Michael this the startup culture which is really easy to dismiss because we’re so familiar with failed startups um explains a lot of the bikes you just talked about but of course Harley-Davidson’s Live Wire which I thought was a really beautiful bike is a
Beautiful bike from a major company Harley-Davidson although it’s now it’s been spun off to a separate company um but it’s a it’s a real Counterpoint to the the bikes you were just talking about so take us through the Livewire experiment and and how that’s gone sure and for the record I
Completely concur it’s a great looking motor motorcycle it’s beautifully made it’s beautifully finished uh handling is excellent It’s a good product um and when they announced it in 2013 it blew me away um you know it blew me away because they were very good at keeping it a
Complete secret and then it was just there and then it was everywhere and okay 2013 it was announced and then they showed it on in various forms and but they took it on a road show and you know they let consumers try it or at least
Sit on it and I tried it at a motorcycle show in Canada where it was on a on a on a rolling floor and you could just spin it up and you know it’s Compact and futuristic and it was optimistic so Bravo to Harley for for
Doing it now it took them a long time to to commercialize you know it did not hit the market until late 2019 that’s a long time from present presenting something especially at The Cutting Edge of Technology you know and when it did come out there’s no way to sugarcoat this it
Was a complete sales flop um you know it came out initially for 29,000 us which is a lot of money for any motorcycle it had a very small battery um even by 2019 2020 standards it was a modest battery um you know just under 15 kilowatt hours that’s you know so had limited
Range um and the dealers were either unprepared or you know chose to willfully ignore it a lot of hot air has been you know spent expelled comparing it to the um um vrod the the bule bule yes uh and vrod you know Matt levic the former CEO of
Harley-Davidson in my view and this is you know me editorializing I think he he deserves a lot of credit that he didn’t get he got a lot of hate uh ultimately lost his job was uh you know not renewed um replaced anyway um for this you know mini roads to
Harley-Davidson strategy where he hypothesized well we’re going to make an electric bike we’re going to make you know Cruisers that can actually stop and have you know you know modern brakes and modern suspension and then you know so we’re going to continue to build our traditional vehicles but we’re going to
Make them more more modern bring in touch screens and TFT screens and you know an app you know connectivity but then make an electric motorcycle and then he forecast making like these small electric vehicles sort of like what Livewire is trying to do now and you know these big changes take
Time time and they take time because you have this traditional manufacturer with with you know um strong values and the traditionalists didn’t like it well too bad the traditionalists at Porsche didn’t like that they were making a four-door SUV for you know wealthy you know suburbanites but ultimately that’s
Why Porsche is still in business because they sell a lot of SUVs and and four-door sedans the 911 will not keep that company alive so this was the right strategy in my view when Harley finally did bring the Livewire to Market it wasn’t supported I saw very little
Advertising it’s clear to any casual Observer that by the time the bike was in dealers the company had given up on it or at least internally was pushing back internally there’s no other explanation why we didn’t see Super Bowl ads for the Livewire we didn’t see television ads for the Live Wire we
Didn’t see big paper ads in the remaining print magazines and special editions and you know there was very little marketing and the dealers hated it my local dealer had a level three DC fast charger branded with Harley-Davidson installed outside and then they like put a picnic
Table in front of it to literally like the the people who worked there were so anti- this that they were like making it impossible to use to the point where you know they they disconnected this the charger it’s still there but it it’s not connected to anything and um the bike
Failed I mean the bike failed you know they sold less than 2,000 Vehicles since the launch in both Harley-Davidson and Livewire Brands and um that means it didn’t recoup their cost the technology was obsolete by the time you know it hit the market and you get into this Doom Loop
Where you know people will say you see it didn’t work um and so there’s no point in uing it which is a shame because with an updated battery and you know faster charging I think and a better price I think it would have worked but they were in my view Frankly
Speaking greedy and even now at 30 uh $19,000 it’s still far too expensive for the target audience in a nutshell good product completely ignoring what people are willing to spend for that kind of product now you have uh I do believe you have a graph with some other shocking
Numbers about Live Wire yes I do what you see here in you know turquoise is what Harley-Davidson themselves told investors at the launch of Livewire were going to be their sales for Livewire I mean fantasy is putting it kindly now you know it’s not for me to to you know
To uh cast negativity at the you know when you embark on an Enterprise you want to be you want to see the best case forward but like that last figure 2025 theoretically next year they were going to sell 55,000 vehicles that would have been roughly what Ducati sells a
Year I mean I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that that that’s that’s magical thinking that there’s no in the world that could go from zero to Ducati in five years um and that’s what they told investors that’s what they told their Partners who you know invested $300
Million in this Enterprise and then in Orange the little tiny slivers are what they actually sold and in 2023 it was 660 vehicles and you know the vast bulk of those 550 or so were the new S2 delmare um the Livewire one which is the original vehicle sold in less than 100
Vehicles last year like those are numbers that would make bota blush oh my and so when you think of the cost of R&D to to build that I mean and you said because it took years and years from when they announced the project to when it actually made it to the
Marketplace I mean what kind of money did they invest in this thing hard to say um they’re a public company I mean Harley-Davidson is a public company well actually both of them are um but they don’t break out um they break out R&D in total but not per
Project at this point it’s been a decade you know 24 they first presented their their running prototypes in 1314 so over 10 years it doesn’t look so bad the other way to look at it which is across 2,000 odd Vehicles slightly less um you know it’s it’s pretty bad like
That each one of those motorcycles could have cost a h 100,000 north of $100,000 if you if you you know amortise the in investment cost um which I suspect is why they stopped pushing it and why they stopped there’s no derivative of that original platform it’s just quietly
Gonna they’re going to sell off the vehicles they’ve got and in fact if you go as I have and looked at Global inventory there are more than than a few hundred demo or zero kilometer like Brand New Old Stock 21s and 22 live wires in dealers globally so it’s it’s
Not a it’s not a good situation and so they spun it off what what is the sorry what is the status of Livewire now I mean they just introduced a new bike recently which is kind of a peculiar looking Cruiser well I mean have to ask them uh Um last year they sold you know like I said just under 600 of the new of their S2 um how many of those were actually sold to customers and how many were sold to dealers because Harley-Davidson uh lists a sale when a dealer takes it off
Of their hands so it h it’s it’s it’s gone from the factory from the manufacturer to the dealer that’s considered a shipment sale not when it’s registered in customer hands and just their accounting practice so it’s hard to say but um 500 Vehicles globally for a new platform
That shares nothing with any other vehicle is not a great start given what you’ve told us about the startups and then we went to a major manufacturer Harley-Davidson which became Live Wire um hasn’t really had much success so has electrification failed which is what a lot of people in North America
Think so the answer is absolutely not um electrification on two wheels is a tremendous success um it is in fact the fastest growing segment of U Mobility worldwide if you refer to it as two wheels powered by an electric motor um they sell far more than any other and
The growth is far greater than in any other field um this will surprise people until they kind of zoom out from from a very sort of North American bias so take a through that that disconnect because you know the the in fact a lot of viewers of this podcast
Will will think that electrification is a wash and that it’s done and and and yet you’re saying something very much the opposite so explain explain this disconnect sure so I think one of the most important things to understand is that the United States is less than 1% of the world motorcycle market for
Volume less than one% so what we see if we’re looking at a North American audience Canada the US I shouldn’t say North America because Mexico is a very very large motorcycle Market um so Canada and the US it’s it’s seen as as like well what I don’t see
Means it doesn’t exist globally the world bought about 63 million motorcycles last year um of which about a million and just under 11 million pardon me just under uh 1,100,000 were electric motorcycles with um more than 5 horsepower and if you include mopeds so think like a Vespa but electric that
Number is over 35 million so it’s an enormous volume of people buying new electric power two wheelers um you know classified as you know a motorcycle of some description uh around the world largely in South Asia so you know we’re talking India Pakistan Vietnam Thailand Philippines huge Market um Cambodia and
In and and China and uh actually tremendous success stories on a business front um if you want to look at the next slide you know there are examples here um that show sort of the the broadly the success pre pandemic and just into the pandemic um you know you can see Zero
There you can see Livewire there you can see um you know a super 73 which is interesting because that’s an American startup that skirts the line between motorcycle and bicycle they have motorcycle power available which is Theory requires license and insurance but a lot of times people are using it for off-road
Purposes only and you know kind of off the books but then you have Goro and Neu and UltraViolet and BMW um who you you know and P with vesa and Yamaha with the NEOS like a lot of electric mopeds scooters being made by the tens of million across Europe across
Japan across South Asia from Big Brands and new start uh startups but big startups like Goro which is that blue uh electric scooter uh just underneath the word market explosion that’s a startup highly valued big roll out in Taiwan and then moving on to other markets um and then
Like I said the Chinese yada is a brand most North Americans have never heard of it’s a huge company in China that makes over six million electric uh mopeds a year uh so tremendous success um and if you go to the next slide it’s even easier to understand that’s the total number of
Combustion motorcycles sold over the last 10 years and you can see it’s you know it’s gone up there’s a dip during the pandemic but what you’ll notice with electric motorcycles is no dip it just keeps climbing um you know now the number is much smaller like I said you
Know it’s it’s you know a million in change versus 60 million but any business person will tell you you know where do you want to operate you want to operate in the fast growing segment that is quickly going to replace um combustion especially in urban areas where governments are
Starting to say you can’t drive a gasoline vehicle into Paris you can’t drive a gasoline combustion vehicle into downtown Beijing or Shanghai so you know that’s the growth segment and that’s where the market is going so it seems like um you know the motorcycle as it is in North America is
A luxury item it seems like electrification doesn’t work there but when at least based on what you’ve shown us but when you think of the motorcycle as a or a not so much motorcycle but as an electric powered vehicle as something practical especially in countries where the climate is more amenable to riding
Year round then it’s a totally different thing so it is what is the relationship between electrification and the Motorcycle as we know it in North America is that a dead thing no it’s well maybe I wish the answer was um so motorcycle sales has defined by
The mic in in the US have been roughly stable for a decade around half a million units plus and lus you know good years bad years half a million is not nothing um nearly half of that is off-road vehicles so Motocross and dirt bikes and race bikes uh so you know onroad absolutely
The US customer the Canadian customer and a lot of northern European customers see the motorcycle as a toy it’s a it’s a it’s a thing you use to amuse yourself maybe you justify by doing some commuting on it but it is a luxury and I think what you said earlier is accurate
To a point 98% of motorcycles sold last year had less than 10 horsepower gas or electric that’s the disconnect if you go to Mexico which is a huge motorcycle Market or Brazil which is even bigger like we’re talking over a million units you know 10 just huge you can argue well
The weather is good but the weather’s good in a lot of the lower United States the weather is not good in the UK um or Northern Italy um or you know many parts of Europe France for instance like the top third of France does has a pretty ugly winter and yet historically people
Rod motorcycles and mopeds all year round as a practical form of of Transportation so I don’t buy the argument that it’s weather related northern China is cold Beijing is cold it snows and yet mopen everywhere um it’s partly cultural um as a culture here of fear um
You know Justified or not around uh riding amongst all these SUVs and the other thing is and this is my thesis is is a product disconnect you know when you’re starting price is $10,000 in 2024 that that’s entry level that that’s considered a commuter motorcycle you just aren’t listening to
The public um and if you actually bring up the next slide um we can see the evidence of that there are basically three clusters of electric motorcycles um in the US context there are EB uh bicycles so ebikes uh these are low speeed low power classified as bicycles you don’t need
Insurance and most places you don’t need a helmet these labels these Brands maybe you know what they are maybe you don’t on the bottom left those are bicycles those are the the volume leaders there are thousands of Brands but those are the volume leaders brands that are
Common on you know the kind of thing you get at Costco then in the top right you know you’ve got Live Wire Harley energica Italian electric super bikes BMW with their electric mopeds and very expensive beautifully Fant and then the electric vesa for instance very expensive all motorcycles
Legally speaking hard to get to you have to get a license you have to have a garage you have to pay insurance they’re very hard to you know expensive to buy and insurance is expensive but then there’s this cluster in the middle and in the US we have seen big success
Broadly over the last five seven years in this vague bicycle motorcycle moped area premium being a perception as you say an Instagram perception rather than factual and you see the huge success of products like suron and their imitators like Taria and voto with the soo brand and startups like super 73 and Onyx
Which briefly again got everyone excited and particularly California these were under $5,000 purchases this is what the market wants and they don’t care that it’s powered by electrons they don’t care that if it was two-stroke they’re not buying it because it’s electric they’re buying it because
It’s cool and it’s cheap and you can go to the store you can go to school you can go to work it’s lightweight you can put it in an elevator and your bring it into your apartment or you know your condo um this is not rocket science this
Was the success of the Japanese in the 1960s with supercub and things of this nature make things that are affordable and practical but have a fun element of fun component zero is just on the edge of that bubble because they do have one offering which is fairly affordable the
FX um and um this is the area where electric vehicles could really succeed and actually motorcycles gasoline powered included like the Grom do succeed because it’s high fun low barrier to entry well it is interesting because I was just you sort of answered my question which is the that that if it
Works for electric vehicles and if motorcycle conventional motorcycle sales are falling then isn’t this the area that everyone should gravitate to they should and actually if you look at the next slide I mean it’s it’s it’s illustrated by you know people can visualize what the what we’re talking
About this is where people are having fun low stress is not worrying about a car payment or a you know $115,000 Ducati payment um these are fun light-hearted vehicles and they work with electrons just as much as they work with with with combustion now combustion is a is a sunset
Technology there’s no rational person looking at purely the business case could argue otherwise um if you’re not allowed to sell combustion vehicles in the key profit making motorcycle markets past 2030 why would you invest in that now but if you are going to do it using existing Motors and platforms then do it
Cheap make a CRF 250 or 300 or this classification of motorcycle and and promote the hell out of that because those are fun bikes and you can get a lot more people on a motorcycling that way but as long as manufacturers are chasing margin where you can make
$2,000 per Bike by selling or more by selling a $25,000 Adventure touring model for Old Men it’s not going to change but isn’t doesn’t this also whether intentionally or not doesn’t this just play to the strength of the electric vehicle because I mean there has to be I would think a huge
Jump in technology for a a vehicle say a sport touring vehicle or an adventure touring vehicle that you’d ride in Canada us to actually get to the point where it’s usable where you can have a range of 3 or 400 miles where it can recharge in a reasonable amount of time
Where Chargers are available and because of the nature of a motorcycle I mean correct me if I’m wrong but there’s just not a lot of space for a battery and batteries are heavy so is that even something that suits that kind of motorcycle and will it ever suit that
Kind of bike the way we just hop on and ride hundreds of miles will that ever happen I mean the answer is of course it will um you know know I I remember these conversations in 2010 you know in 2009 you know Nissan forgetting Tesla for the moment because before 2013 they
Were a bunch of guys in California with a sports car that was never going to change the world um but Nissan comes out in in 2010 and says or 2011 and says we have a the Nissan Leaf an electric car for regular people five seats five has a
Hatchback whatever 100 miles of range because they argued most people drive with a city urban lifestyle Drive less than that per day and you’ll charge it at home those facts have not changed and in fact that is the reality um you know now we’ve had tremendous Innovation
On the battery front on the charging side in particular and Tesla is unequivocally the champion here they deserve the credit they deser that they have you know for the success of their you know financial success and their volume success you know selling a million electric cars a year is not it’s
Not a joke and you can go all day as long you know your bladder will run out before your battery does and that’s fine motorcycles you’re right it’s not going to like unless there’s a massive step change in the battery energy density it’s not going to change that said there
Are no motorcycles that could go 300 miles none zero with gasoline none like you know the the average motorcycle today has 18 lit fuel tank um that means that if it’s a big capacity machine over 1,000 CC’s you get 200 maybe 250 kilometers of range out of
That that’s what 180 miles the argument is yes but I can get gas anywhere I can fill up in five minutes that’s true the use case hasn’t changed humans haven’t changed the lug luxury consumer who buys the $25,000 GS they dream about riding to Argentina but what they’re really doing is you
Know five weekends a year they’ll put on they’ll they’ll go for a long ride they’ll ride for two hours they’ll stop they’ll ride for two hours and then they’re done because they’re 55 years old and then something we might be familiar with and and and they have aches and pains and physical limitations
Like their bladder um so it will happen that’s not where electrification on two wheels needs to focus it needs to do the Nissan Leaf thing and that’s where the bulk of electric cars are not here but globally it’s the daily driver and in China there are 100 million
Electric scooters and people live in apartments they don’t have houses but you remove the little battery twice a week you charge it in your flat you bring it down in the morning we’re not afraid to charge this twice a day sometimes because we accept that in in
Response to to having all this you know usability it’s a supercomputer it’s a touchcreen it’s an entertainment device a non-smartphone you can charge once a week but I don’t think it’s a big leap look the evidence is in the vast majority of the motorcycle buying public in South Asia which represent you know
90% of the motorcycle cycle buying public globally accept this as a better solution for their daily two- wheed use um as far as touring is concerned it’ll happen it’s just going to take another five or seven years and now a word from our sponsor after which I’ll throw a log
In the fire and share a heartwarming tale eBay Motors is here for the ride let’s talk clutches motorcycle clutches the unheralded coupling between engine and transmission I’ve been vexed by clutches a condition I traced to a machine I loved but a machine that showed me No Love in return a 1974
Norton Commando then as now perhaps the most malifu sounding machine in the history of motorcycling the Commando was one design shortcoming piled upon the next however no single item of the Commando was more reflective of its ax age engineering than the clutch and here’s why after the transmission main
Sha exited the gearbox on its way to the commando’s port side port side it had to pass first the sprocket then run way out into the housing for the primary drive and on the very end of the main shaft sat the clutch which meant that approximately six feet of the main shaft
Was unsupported by a bearing which meant naturally that the main shaft bent but it was difficult to know that it was bent because the tweak of only a few thousandths of an inch was difficult ult to diagnose but it was enough to make the clutch exhibit conflicting characteristics it would slip and then
Grab slip and grab the only cure was a new main shaft towards the end of our relationship I could change the commando’s main shaft in around an hour 53 minutes was my best recorded time with over 122 Million Parts you can make sure your number one ride stays running smoothly brake kits LED
Headlights roof racks bumpers whatever your baby needs eBay Motors hases it and with eBay guaranteed fit it’s guaranteed to fit your ride the first time every time or your money back plus at these prices you’re burning rubber not cash keep your ride alive at ebaymotors.com eligible items only exclusions
Apply what is working in electrification and what isn’t working I would summarize it this way electric motorcycles are working at the low end of the market lowend in terms of power and lowend in terms of cost now not cheap not trash but accessible Mass Market commuters vehicles for off-road
Fund you know things that are that don’t require high high barrier to entry and where they’re not working are as Luxury Motor motorcycles as direct replacement for your you know for your THC touring or sport or Roadster motorcycle in the combustion world so that’s kind of interesting
Because it’s like I said earlier it seems this peculiar thing to me that that it’s almost like electrification of two wheelers has stumbled into maybe what is the key to maybe bring motorcycling back is something that’s viable because all the there’s so much hand ringing amongst oems about you know young people not
Wanting motorcycles and and and you know we have this Market where there’s these Ultra high-end products I was looking at a dcti v4r for 50 some $55,000 in a dealership the other day and I mean they can’t sell a ton of those and then you know you’re telling me the
Electrification so you know I mean it’s kind of curious how this is happening isn’t it that maybe electrification is sort of inadvertently the market is we’re we’re being told what people want I think and this is something that I haven’t talked to you about in the past um or to most people I
Mean we’re enthusiasts you know I I’m we’re professionals in this industry in different ways and as a consequence of those two facts we we’re we’re steeped we read about it we we ride a lot we know what’s going on and that’s great and my generation certainly the Mantra
In my career starting in the you know early 2000s was we go to you know we got to listen to and focus on the enthusiasts the hardcore you know KTM built an Empire they came back from bankruptcy to Europe’s largest OEM selling you know 350 almost 400,000 Vehicles a year
Um by by doing that by focusing on their like building their values around this idea of like we’re ready to raise hardcore that’s our Market you know Harley-Davidson hardcore we’re the American open road Cruiser my opinion is that we’ve let the lunatics run the Asylum lunatics including people like me and you
Um thank you for that you’re welcome um you know what makes Honda the world’s most successful Motorcycle Company not just this year but ever uh is that they make products for normal people that allow them to be profitable that allow them to be trustworthy and then they can go off and
Have the most successful racing program in the history of motorcycling to make the some of the most exciting Enthusiast products you know available um and the same could be said for Yamaha and the same could be said for you know increasingly brands that people didn’t know about five years ago like CF
Moto um you have to be a business first first before you can be an Enthusiast you know whatever and you know to the coming full circle to the conversation about Harley or with the Live Wire you know it’s executed brilliantly on so many levels and at the
Same time like did you actually talk to normal people um you know normal people not Harley people did you talk to someone who was motorcycle curious and was like I kind of want a bike you know Circa 2015 2017 you know a millennial in 2015 you
Know who at that time was 30 starting to think about you know or in their late 20s starting to think about maybe starting a family or getting married or starting a business or moving the next step in their career they got multiple priorities and sinking 30k us into a
Starter bike is not one of them so I think you know my feeling is that what electrification is is the canary and the coal mine although that’s a negative me metaphor it’s more like a it’s showing the way the success of suron this chines off-road only lightweight $5,000 electric
Motorcycle is is is crystalline it’s saying people want bikes as long as they’re not outrageous you know and when the Honda CB 350 50 came out that’s what it cost in modern dollars under $5,000 and you know the the same Boomers who are now like insisting that anything
Under a th000 cc’s is for beginners are like forgetting where they got their feet wet which was you know Japanese small displacement bikes with 10 20 horsepower that were fun and didn’t like impact their lives in a big way um the luxury Market is a hard space to
Operate despite it being a bull market um I mean we have a Graphic you got some numbers on the uh 10 years you’ve got some numbers on the luxury Market here I believe don’t you yeah it’s a 10-year look and it’s been a bull market it’s up 40% broadly 40%
Growth and you can see KTM taking the line share that growth BMW huge growth if if we extanded that line past 2014 into the past BMW was was on the verge of closing its motorcycle unit um in the early 2000s so they went from 50,000 to over
200,000 um it’s a long and steady growth Triumph has gone up about 30% ducati’s gone up about 20% you know Harley-Davidson and Indian I mean Harley-Davidson has gone down 40% so how they lost that much how do how do you explain sorry how do you explain that uh not listening to to
Reality not listening to the market they were listening to their people internally they were listening to enthusiasts of Harley-Davidson and they’ve been making good money um doing it so as a business uh they doubl down on margin and they’ve been delivering profitability on a shareholder level um
But their you know their sales have been in a terminal slide except for one blip in 21 um positive year in 21 and um they seem content with that and maybe that’s natural that’s the evolution of that brand and maybe that’s why they spun off Livewire in the hope to pick up those
Sales on other in other areas but you know the this graph illustrates that selling high-end motorcycles is hard KTM and BMW in particular Triumph and Ducati to a lesser extent have invested a lot of money to to fuel that growth and that wasn’t marketing it was developing new products that people
Wanted um I will uh I think I would close this part of the conversation by quoting Lee aak coka of all people um you know former uh CEO and chair of of Chrysler Corporation um and before that uh the sort of prod Prodigy at Ford in the 1960
You know he was many things but one thing he he understood with great clarity was you know the secret to success in motor vehicle um manufacturing and sales this is not really that complicated make products people want at a price they’re willing to pay that’s it now that’s hard
You know hard to do but that’s the that should be the guiding star for any company selling Motor Vehicles especially motorcycle make a good product at a price people are willing to pay if you start believing your own marketing and this you know Again full circle to
Cake if you think there’s a giant market for $112,000 10 horsepower electric motorcycles then you live in a world that I’m not familiar with and and the the facts don’t support that you’re listening to the lowdown show presented by advv rider.com and supported by ebaymotors.com I think the most interesting thing that
I took from this conversation is that we’ve gotten so far away from what motorcycling really could be or should be that it’s the market is split into this you know ridiculously high-end thing that most of us can’t afford including myself and then you know so much of what got us interested in
Motorcycling in the first place and especially in the 1960s when you think of the you know Honda’s great tagline the best tagline ever which is you meet the Nic people on a Honda yeah and those bikes in today’s Marketplace are essentially served by to a large degree
By these sort of uh inexpensive electric vehicles you’re talking about so we’ve kind of circled around and and you know maybe we have seen the future maybe electric propulsion is one of those things that really will reinvigorate the sport I would say that we have to stop selling
Motorcycles based on their propulsion or their technology and stop selling motorcycles to motorcycles and start making and selling motorcycles for people in closing a word from our sponsor eBay Motors is here for the ride with some elbow grease fresh installs and a whole lot of love you transformed
100,000 miles and a body full of rust into a drive that’s all your own brake kits LED headlights whatever you need eBay Motors hases it and with eBay guaranteed fit it’s guaranteed to fit your ride the first first time every time or your money back plus at these
Prices you’re burning rubber not cash keep your ride alive at ebaymotors.com eligible items only exclusions apply thank you for listening to the lowdown show
For episode 1 on The Lowdown Show, we’re joined by Michael Uhlarik, a world-renowned motorcycle designer, founder of Motorcycle Global and an avid fan of electrification.
Why have major players in the space emerged onto the scene with so much excitement and then fizzled? What happened to Cake? And is this the natural path forward for electrification in the motorcycle industry?
We’ll put all of these questions and more to Uhlarik and learn plenty about the tribulations and triumphs of battery bikes.
