This year has been all about electric vehicles but it doesn’t stop at cars. Harley-Davidson has announced its electric motorcycle division, LiveWire, is now its own separate company. Jochen Zeitz, chairman, president, and CEO of Harley-Davidson and chairman and CEO of LiveWire, to discuss the first publicly-traded electric motorcycle company. "It really adapts to the style of riding that you want, whether you're a beginner or a real pro on the motorcycle," he said.

Harley-Davidson Spins Off New Electric Motorcycle Division

today was a big day for an american icon here at the new york stock exchange. Harley Davidsons Livewire electric motorcycle division going public by merging with a special purpose acquisition company and becoming the country's first publicly traded electric motorcycle firm. Well, Livewire also launching its newest model, the S to Del mar this morning, making it available for reservations. And I spoke with the Ocean Sites, Chair and Ceo of Harley Davidson and Chair and Ceo of Livewire earlier today outside of the exchange, take a look, but it's the perfect timing. It's the first day of trading at the new york stock exchange with live wires. A new company, we're launching Del mar, we're taking reservations. As of today, it's going to deliver in the spring of next year. It's priced at $16,999 and it's quite an extraordinary bike that really redefines the urban experience of riding. Um, it has incredible talk. It's £130 lighter than our life. Wire one that's out there. So it's for a rider that has experience, but also for a new rider because it has regenerative braking, it has no gear. So it's easy from a handling a point of view and really adapt to the style of riding that you want, whether you're beginning or on a motorcycle. Del Mar by launching absolutely beautiful outside of the New York Stock Exchange. How much does a bike like this cost? And since it is electric charge, it just plug it into your wall with a level two charger or just into your regular plug and then it charges 75 minutes and a little longer in your regular turn outlet? This is the first bike we've built from the ground up, it's really fully developed in house, the motor, the battery charging and the control system. So this is all in house developed components, developed us and manufactured in the Holiday Factory charger is inside the charger and this one is on the other side and on the next model that's actually under the seat where you then connect the power and the battery obviously built in battery is actually part of the structure. So you don't have a traditional frame, the battery is part of the structure of the framework of the bike. So, this is the new, beautiful Delmar just launching by Live Wire of course, formally a unit of Harley Davidson electric motorcycles. Let's keep walking and talking, I want to hear more about the sustainability aspect of this and what kind of demand there is for electric motorcycles. We're, we're really pioneering the electric, premium electric motorcycle space. So we will find out how excitement there's going to be for the new model. This Live Wire one model is already in the market now, it's incredible bike. I ride it almost on a daily basis when I can. It's a great change from a traditional Harley Davidson model to then experienced Live wire in the city and it's a very agile bike, incredible performance, 0 to 60 in three seconds. So it has a lot of, so other than the fact that it's electric versus gas, power, regular Harley Davidson motorcycle, what are the differences? Does it make the same sort of noise as a traditional Harley hog as you can imagine? Look sound and feel totally different. It's more of a jet engine sound that it makes because there's no combustion engine include, it's all coming from the power trade that makes that quite, quite incredible sound, but it's very quiet, so you really hear what's going around you, you stop at a traffic light, you have people talking and you really enjoy your surroundings. It's a very different experience to the great holidays and experience, but this is more bike for the urban environment and as such, I think people will really enjoy it. How easy is it to charge? We talk so much about the charging infrastructure, how that needs to be built out for electric vehicles and motorcycles in general. Is it easy to access charging definitely in the cities? It's easy now because there are more charges, charging units going up every day and you can just charge charging in your garage, which is what I do and it has plenty of range to really take you through the day. So this range anxiety that people have, I don't think once, once you have the bike you don't, you don't really experience unless you want to go beyond and go touring, that's a whole different, the customer that we can't quite reach yet because the technology is not ready to put it into touring bike anything in the urban and beyond environment, This is a perfect little bit closer to this bike as well. Obviously our viewers can see the live wires sign and live wire, the electric motorcycle vehicle unit, formerly of Harley, now spinning off into a SPAC merger here at the new york stock exchange, it's my understanding you're going to remain the Ceo of Livewire as its own separate company and the Ceo of Harley Davidson, how are you going to be able to manage both of those roles? Especially in this in the early days, it's really a win win that we have because we are not just a startup having to reinvent and re do everything. We can rely on the infrastructure from a manufacturing, from a supply, from an engineering point of view, so if we need to know how from traditional company like Harley Davidson, we can get that. But on the other side we have a totally dedicated team that focuses just on livewire and a different management team that thinks about go to market and very different way that disrupts the market and really pioneers and transform focused on electric electrification of the sport and therefore it's really one plus one equals three scenario where we can use the fundamentals of Harley Davidson, but bring it into Livewire and focusing on what really, what really will make the difference. In order to electrify the space from a sustainability standpoint, how much better our electric Well over the long run, obviously electric beats the combustion engine, but of course it also depends on where your electricity comes from. But overall we believe that life wire can be carbon neutral by 2035, it will take much longer for holiday. It's 2050 electorate is definitely heading that carbon reduction goals that we've set for the company. Our thanks there again to yoga insights, chair, president and Ceo, probably Davidson and chair and Ceo of Live wire as well.