Harley-Davidson is unveiling this week, Project LiveWire, an electric super bike that goes from 0 to 60 in four seconds, replete with the roar of a jet plane.
Protoypes will be made available for Harley enthusiasts and collectors for test-rides, and to provide feedback to the American manufacturer before the model goes into mass production.
Requiring only 30 minutes to an hour to charge, the superbike has a 130-mile range and can reach a top speed of just shy of 100mph and of producing 75hp.
Project LiveWire will be embarking on a tour of US and Canada Harley-Davidson dealerships to allow as many people as possible to get a glimpse and a feel for the new bike. The tour is also expected to take in Europe in 2015 as the company attempts to perfect the bike’s design and gather as much data as possible from its strong base of customers.
Matthew Levatich, Harley-Davidson's President and CEO, said the experimentation with electricity is a natural next step.
"As a company, we have always been about strength and freedom and power," Levatich said at the exclusive preview held at a closed runway at the former Marine Corps Air Station in Irvine.
So it's really a question of 'why not?' instead of 'why?' This isn't some sort of ploy for us. This is real.
Electric technology hasn't seen the development in the motorbike industry as it has in the automobile counterpart, with manufacturers of the former currently not required by federal agencies to produce a certain number of electric vehicles or to maintain an increasingly low average miles per gallon rate. In addition, a motorbike frame cannot accommodate massive battery packs as easily as a car chassis.
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