Harley-Davidson’s Electric Brand Has A Sweet New Motorcycle That Nobody Is Going To Buy

A decade ago, Harley-Davidson embarked on a journey to make an electric motorcycle a reality. The brand now has an entire spin-off company, LiveWire, to be the home of its electric efforts. LiveWire is adding a new motorcycle to its lineup that’s getting rave reviews. The 2025 LiveWire S2 Alpinista sounds like the apex of electric motorcycles with its 84 HP power, low center of gravity, and quick agility, but I’m not sure who is going to buy it.

Now, let me be clear here. I’m generally a fan of Harley-Davidson’s products. I think the Pan America is a total blast and I had the time of my life scraping the floorboards of a Street Glide ST on a race track. I was one of the lucky people in the media to get to ride the LiveWire electric bike when it hit the circuit in 2019. I keep rooting for the Motor Company from Milwaukee even if some of its decisions miss so hard that they’re like the 2024 Chicago White Sox.

So, I really want LiveWire’s latest to succeed. The new LiveWire S2 Alpinista is an electric sportbike, something normally outside of Harley’s wheelhouse, and pairs a respectable 84 HP with good handling and that addictive instant torque EVs have. Early reviews seem to praise it, but I’m not sure it fixes the biggest problem with LiveWire bikes thus far.

Different Flavors Of The Same Thing

The 2025 S2 Alpinista is the third motorcycle in LiveWire’s middleweight S2 lineup. Like the S2 Del Mar and the S2 Mulholland that came before it, the S2 Alpinista is based on the scalable Arrow architecture. This architecture is the next generation of the platform that underpins the old LiveWire and has upgrades including a battery and motor that are structural elements. Likewise, Harley engineers simplified the platform so that the newer Arrow bikes can be built in 44 percent less time than the old LiveWire. Perhaps even better, Arrow was designed so that it wouldn’t be terribly difficult to make S1 heavyweight motorcycles or S3 lightweight motorcycles all on the same platform.

In other words, Harley-Davidson has done to electric motorcycles what automakers have done with cars. As such, all of the S2 middleweights have the same basic specifications. Every S2 has the same 10.5 kWh lithium battery, the same 84 HP and 194 ft-lb of torque motor, the same charging system, and nearly the same performance. If you go to LiveWire’s website you’ll find that all three S2 models will go 113 miles to 120 miles on a charge in a city, hit 60 mph in around 3 seconds, and take two hours and 20 minutes to charge fully at the fastest. All of them even weigh roughly around 430 pounds and change.

At its core, the S2 Alpinista is the same motorcycle I’ve been writing about since 2023. However, LiveWire has been able to give these bikes their own character through changes in bodywork, wheels, fork rakes, and headlights. The S2 Del Mar is the street tracker while the S2 Mulholland is a power cruiser. The S2 Alpinista is being pitched of the most sporty of the trio.

Here’s the Mulholland, for reference:

And the Del Mar:

To give you an example of how this works. The 2025 S2 Alpinista has a pair of 17-inch wheels shod in Dunlop Roadsmart IV tires. The smaller wheels and grippy rubber are supposed to make the Alpinista a bit of an urban superbike. Meanwhile, the Mulholland has a big 19-inch wheel up front and is followed by a 17-inch rear wheel, a configuration befitting a cruiser style and ride. Finally, S2 Del Mar with a pair of 19-inch wheels and dirt-style rubber.

These changes alone should give the Alpinista a more sporty ride compared to its siblings, but there are more changes that you do not immediately see with your eyes. For example, the S2 Mulholland has a fork rake of 29 degrees while the Alpinista is a more aggressive 24.5 degrees, about on par with the 24 degree rake of the S2 Del Mar.

When you look at the specs, the S2 Alpinista actually looks like an S2 Del Mar with a wheel package. The ground clearance is the same at 6.5 inches, the seat height is an inch shorter at 31.2 inches, and both bikes even have the same trail of 3.6 inches. The Alpinista manages to have a wheelbase of 56.8 inches, 0.4 inches shorter than the S2 Del Mar.

The tech is also the same. You get Showa suspension and Brembo brakes paired with four riding modes, a color display, and cornering-sensitive riding aids including ABS and traction control. In short, the folks of LiveWire have been hitting copy and paste a lot, but that’s what you’d expect when given the promise of a single platform to underpin many motorcycles.

Cycle World had this to say from its press ride:

It’s an exciting and capable motorcycle, but the fun doesn’t last as long as an ICE motorcycle. And even doing our best to remember it’s not supposed to directly complete or replace one, it’s hard not to wish it were one as we loft the front wheel skyward exiting tight corners in the mountains. LiveWire’s all-new S2 Alpinista is a punk rock song: fast, fun, and short.

[…]

An initial crack of the throttle delivers a surge of power that propels the rider forward in a way a gas motorcycle simply cannot. Power comes on strong like a big twin (but perfectly smooth) and continues to pull relentlessly like an inline-four. With electrics there is no shifting and no messing around with a clutch. Just twist and go. Throttle response is direct and allows the rider to predictably send power to the rear wheel. But while power delivery is potent at any speed, it’s still tractable and manageable.

[…]

Handling is sporty and precise. On twisty roads, the Alpinista requires a fair amount of rider input to initiate lean, but once the bike is on the side of the tire it feels planted, stable, and easily holds a line. The Showa suspension is taut and provides plenty of holdup during spirited riding while still managing to be comfortable on city streets. Damping adjustments make a noticeable change and it was easy to find a setup that worked for my 120-pound weight.

Cycle World concludes its review by calling the Alpinista the sportiest LiveWire yet, and I believe them. The middleweight category is quite receptive to electrification and in my experience, middleweight electrics are very fun. I want to be excited for this motorcycle, but I can’t help escaping the feeling that this is more of what American motorcycle buyers don’t want.

The Hole Electric Bikes Are Trapped In

I had an illuminating experience when I got to ride Can-Am’s new electric motorcycles last year. At that event, the company’s engineers were pretty honest in that as of now, electric motorcycle companies are sort of stuck. Their engineers can add more battery, but that adds weight and cost. If you take some battery out, the bike gets cheaper but won’t go very far.

BRP’s engineers told me that there simply isn’t a good way around today’s battery limitations. It was their belief that car manufacturers have it easier because nobody buying a GMC Hummer EV cares that it weighs as much as a tank. But nobody is going to want to buy a $40,000 motorcycle that weighs over 1,000 pounds. Remember, most Americans buy motorcycles as a fun luxury toy, not a daily driver.

So, because of the limitations of battery technology, electric motorcycle companies try to figure out which levers to pull, and buyers in America aren’t really latching on. LiveWire, like BRP, has chosen to find a sort of middle-of-the-road option. According to Cycle World, the Alpinista will return about 68 miles of range on canyon roads or about 79 miles if you do a mix of riding around town or freeway riding. This tracks with the battery storage on hand. The Zero DSR/X I tested for a year and a half was able to almost double that canyon range with 6 kWh more on deck.

In my experience, a range of about 70 miles is more than enough to have a fun blast outside of city limits. But the next problem is a hard one. On a Level 1 charge, a LiveWire S2 takes 9 hours to charge. That goes down to about 6 hours if you’re charging from 20 percent to 80 percent. Level 2 is faster, requiring two hours and 22 minutes to fully charge or about an hour and 20 minutes to get from 20 percent to 80 percent.

In my experience, this makes any sort of distance riding a major pain. If you’re out trying to have a day of riding, it’s you’ll spend more time charging than riding. Electric cars get around this by having bigger batteries and access to faster charging. This bike cannot fast charge at all.

As our friends at RideApart note, the press imagery for the Alpinista was taken on mountain roads the bikes don’t even have enough range to handle in a satisfying manner. But it should be noted that LiveWire isn’t alone here. When I did the press ride for Can-Am’s new motorcycles, we rode close to 100 miles on bikes that largely ran out of juice in 40 to 60 miles depending on riding style. How did BRP get around that? BRP dragged around giant battery trailers to charge the bikes at each stop.

This is a long way to say that, for now, the majority of the electric motorcycles on the American market today are purely urban rides. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that! Motorcycles can be a secret weapon for threading through city traffic.

The issue that compounds all of these limitations is pricing. The LiveWire S2 Del Mar is $16,249, the S2 Mulholland is $16,499, and the S2 Alpinista is landing on the market for $15,999. So, here’s an electric motorcycle that’s designed to carve canyons that doesn’t have the range to reach the mountains. Or, you can use it as your urban assault vehicle. But you’d have to pass up a bunch of Royal Enfields and a ton of other more affordable urban bikes to pay $15,999.

More Unknowns

Ultimately, I’m left wondering who is the ideal buyer here. The other electric Harleys are not selling. LiveWire sold 597 motorcycles in 2022, burning $85 million of its parent’s money. LiveWire sold 660 bikes in 2023, but deepened its losses to $125 million. LiveWire is not going to release 2024 full-year data until February, but the fact that it sold just 99 motorcycles in quarter three of 2024 is not a good sign. Analysts are expecting LiveWire’s losses to equal up to $115 million for 2024. We’re also not sure what’s going to happen to LiveWire given the changing political climate.

What I can tell you is that things at LiveWire are going odd enough that the company moved its headquarters to Harley’s property in Milwaukee while the company is now “outsourcing” most of its operations to Harley-Davidson. In other words, LiveWire is pretty much not a Harley in name only now.

Again, I’m not trying to bash the company here. I’m seemingly one of a few writers with a love for Harley products. I’m just puzzled at the S2 Alpinista. Buyers are not scooping up the other S2s and I’m not sure the Alpinista is different enough to change that. Time will tell, but I hope I’m wrong.