UPDATED PRICING (Post Inflation fears): Harley Livewire S2 Del Mar launching today at 12:40 CST

LDRHAWKE

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If you watch the movie “LONG WAY UP” you may reconsider buying an electric Harley…..it took them 100 years before they made an IC engine that would’ve leak oil and wouldn’t break. . I hate to think how long it will take them to make a reliable electric bike…..🥸
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If you watch the movie “LONG WAY UP” you may reconsider buying an electric Harley…..it took them 100 years before they made an IC engine that would’ve leak oil and wouldn’t break. . I hate to think how long it will take them to make a reliable electric bike…..🥸
The lifespan of an electric bike taken on a trip like LONG WAY UP cannot really be compared to the lifespan of same bike simply riding a mix of highway and city commuting on paved roads for an hour or so twice a day. I love those series, but they are a highly specific and unusual use case, my fear for the long term reliability of an electric bike is pretty much non-existant with how I will treat it!
 

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Rode this for over an hour yesterday, with a half hour ride on the Livewire One in-between the Del Mar rides (for comparison). It is a bit tall seat height, but its really comfortable and fast/easy to maneuver. Silent compared to the Livewire One. Speed/Acceleration comparison between the One/Del Mar on my butt dyno shows no discernable difference. Both take off like a bat out of hell and feel exactly the same in terms of acceleration/speed.

Only real differences between the bikes are rider position: One is a more sporty forward lean/Del Mar is more MX upright position and easy to stand up on the pegs if desired. One's seat height is slightly shorter than the Del Mar. (I could stand flat footed on the One, but was up on toes for the Del Mar) The battery is different on the del mar, using standard panasonic cylindrical cells like Tesla, and is a bit smaller which is why its got less range. As a result, the bike is 100 lbs lighter. Other than that, the main differences are cosmetic.. del mar has traditional harley bullet turn signals instead of those butt ugly futuristic light bars on the One. Del mar also went to a more traditional style speedo (in modern technology) with a sportster style circular single speedo, which is a TFT screen. The handlebar controls on the One are standard Harley controls, while the Del mar has updated nicer handlebar controls which also switched over to standard japanese bike turn signal alignment as a single toggle switch on the left (compared to standard harley one on each side for that side).

They are both solidly built bikes, but the Del Mar feels like a more thought out and polished design/construction. The One just looks like the design team didn't flesh it out as much to really keep the essence of Harley (through small design elements like the bullet turn signals and sportster speedo) within a modern/updated styling.

With the pricing dropped back down to close to announced pricing, and comparing it to the existing Harley bike prices, I've evolved into acceptance of the pricing (still think its about 2-3k more than it should be for the range). Its slightly more than I'm comfortable with purchasing, but its a really solidly built bike that does not feel cheap in any way, and I will be selling a couple vintage Vespas to take the sting off that purchase price financed.

I'm a vintage guy, love the sound and feel of old bikes, love shifting/etc, but the more I commute in NYC congestion on my Harley, the more justified my mind sees an electric bike for this narrow use case. No legal lane splitting in NYC. I'll lane split in Manhattan traffic at lights and occasionally in motion when traffic is crawling, but I refuse to lane split on the highway where people drive like animals around here. With that style of driving, I get stuck in an hour of stop and go traffic on the highway probably once or twice a week. Clutch hand cramp is a pain in the ass after half hour or more in traffic. I thought I would hate the twist and go feel of it, cause I hate modern twist and go scooters, but this bike is so fast compared to modern scooters that they are not even in the same ballpark of an experience. The twist and go riding style on an electric bike really isn't noticeable or annoying like it is on a scooter where you just aren't having as much fun! So the twist and go electric bike, not having to deal with clutch hand cramping, and more than enough range for 40 mi round trip daily commuting is pretty much the ideal use case for a bike like this. I've got a Harley for driving longer distance than the range would allow. Bonus is that I work real early and real late for most of the year, so I can commute on this without feeling guilty about waking up the world, and don't have to baby the throttle at those hours of the day/night just to keep the sound down.

I see the pricing this way... Harley/Livewire would love it to be 2-3k more than it is.. customers (like me) see it being 2-3k more than it should be.. and Livewire probably got some crap from reservation holders like myself about changing the price to almost exactly as the limited version.. so they chose the median between their desires and customers desires on pricing, which in turn lands at almost exactly what they announced.

IMG_20230603_182505_069.jpg

IMG_20230603_182355_089.jpg
Yeah, it's alot like my Zero S. Bit more stylish, I think, but the stats overlap alot.

-Crissa
 
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Crissa, or anyone else with experience....

I'm curious how charging works on a super charger if you have a lower speed charging vehicle? The Del Mar has level 2 charging, so I assume there are free public level 2 chargers which are the ones you see in parking garages or parking lots at banks/etc, but I am curious if, once my local Tesla superchargers allow non-Tesla vehicles to charge, can I plug a level 2 charging vehicle into the supercharger and get level 2 charging speeds from the supercharger? I've found an adapter plug that converts the tesla charger into a level 2 charger to plug into the bike, but I'm not sure if that works software-wise/etc.
 

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Only info up right now is $100 reservation for spring 2023 launch.

No info on refundable reservation or anything else.
https://www.livewire.com/delmar

2 hours we'll see.

I'm ready to put a deposit down as long as it's refundable. But I would only buy it if it came in under 10k which I highly doubt based on Harleys track record for pricing.

My guess is they consider it affordable at 12-15k which is barely 5k less than the livewire one.

Ha
Not trying to be rude but this is a curious question. Why are we talking Harley pricing on this forum? I'm new in this CT owners forum.
 


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Not trying to be rude but this is a curious question. Why are we talking Harley pricing on this forum? I'm new in this CT owners forum.
Because this is in the general automotive and off topic section of the forum. And it's related enough being focused on ev motorcycles.

If it weren't appropriate, they wouldn't have a general automotive and off topic section!

There are enough of us on here who either own or are interested in owning an ev motorcycle. And until Tesla decides to produce one, there will be offshoot discussions.
 

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Because this is in the general automotive and off topic section of the forum. And it's related enough being focused on ev motorcycles.

If it weren't appropriate, they wouldn't have a general automotive and off topic section!

There are enough of us on here who either own or are interested in owning an ev motorcycle. And until Tesla decides to produce one, there will be offshoot discussions.
Thanks for your kind reply.
 

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Not trying to be rude but this is a curious question. Why are we talking Harley pricing on this forum? I'm new in this CT owners forum.
Because that's what some of us want to put in our trucks? ^-^

EV motorcycles will be short range for the forseeable future, but once you're somewhere, well, leave the truck charging and go have fun! A motorcycle uses from 50-150 kWh per mile while the truck will be from 300-500 kWh per mile.

Crissa, or anyone else with experience....

I'm curious how charging works on a super charger if you have a lower speed charging vehicle? The Del Mar has level 2 charging, so I assume there are free public level 2 chargers which are the ones you see in parking garages or parking lots at banks/etc, but I am curious if, once my local Tesla superchargers allow non-Tesla vehicles to charge, can I plug a level 2 charging vehicle into the supercharger and get level 2 charging speeds from the supercharger? I've found an adapter plug that converts the tesla charger into a level 2 charger to plug into the bike, but I'm not sure if that works software-wise/etc.
😅

So, Superchargers are DC, and can do from 50kWh on up. There are CCS adapters, or will be, the most common right now is the Magic Box on some of the chargers. Mostly, though, you can't CCS charge on a NACS Supercharger without the Magic Box. Lots of CCS vehicles can't charge on the Superchargers - for instance, Energica couldn't on the EU ones.

Destination chargers are AC, and do from 3-22kWh, with the latter being rare, but they do exist. You can get an adapter that anything - even a teapot - can run on a Destination charger. There are lots available. One of the things Zero riders like to do with 'dual charge' by plugging into two Destination chargers and getting 11kWh from each, which adds up to the maximum a Zero can charge at.

If you plug a level 2 adapter into a Supercharger, it'll just get stuck and not work. There's no AC at the Supercharger.

-Crissa
 
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Because that's what some of us want to put in our trucks? ^-^

EV motorcycles will be short range for the forseeable future, but once you're somewhere, well, leave the truck charging and go have fun! A motorcycle uses from 50-150 kWh per mile while the truck will be from 300-500 kWh per mile.


😅

So, Superchargers are DC, and can do from 50kWh on up. There are CCS adapters, or will be, the most common right now is the Magic Box on some of the chargers. Mostly, though, you can't CCS charge on a NACS Supercharger without the Magic Box. Lots of CCS vehicles can't charge on the Superchargers - for instance, Energica couldn't on the EU ones.

Destination chargers are AC, and do from 3-22kWh, with the latter being rare, but they do exist. You can get an adapter that anything - even a teapot - can run on a Destination charger. There are lots available. One of the things Zero riders like to do with 'dual charge' by plugging into two Destination chargers and getting 11kWh from each, which adds up to the maximum a Zero can charge at.

If you plug a level 2 adapter into a Supercharger, it'll just get stuck and not work. There's no AC at the Supercharger.

-Crissa
Oh yeah I didn't even realize that destination chargers were ac and superchargers were DC! Two years of actively paying attention to ev industry and I never really looked close enough at the charging aspect of it! Obvious how it wouldn't work plugging one into the other now that you point that out! I always just assumed that all chargers converted AC to DC.

I did see there were adapters vs a magic box but just didn't look into the differences between chargers enough. Thanks for pointing the obvious out to me! 😂

It's all a mystery when you've never had to use any of this stuff before. Soon enough though!
 
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Crissa

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Yeah, think of it this way: Battery chargers are bulky things. The faster you want a big batter charged, the bigger the charger needs to be. You can see this on the battery tender shelf at the automotive store!

So the car carries with it a nice, basic charger. Tesla's is extra nice, it can dial down to just a few amps at 120v.

The thing we call the 'granny lead' or the 'Destination charger' isn't a charger, but a fancy plug that tells the car what kind of outlet it's plugged into, so it won't overload the circuit.

Superchargers, though, they handle 10x or more the power - and so they're pretty huge! The actual hardware is the size of a commercial fridge and is tucked away somewhere on the edge of the charging lot. And what they are varies base upon the type of grid connection, any batteries or solar attached to the station, etc. So they can be really specialized.

In that case, when you plug them in, the car says 'oh!' an swaps the terminals from the little charger to directly to the battery bus. And then it just gives sensor data to the charger so it can pump in the right amount for the charging infrastruction and the car. Because they do this balancing act, they can go way beyond the nameplate amps for just long enough to get your car charged super-fast.

-Crissa
 


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Yeah, think of it this way: Battery chargers are bulky things. The faster you want a big batter charged, the bigger the charger needs to be. You can see this on the battery tender shelf at the automotive store!

So the car carries with it a nice, basic charger. Tesla's is extra nice, it can dial down to just a few amps at 120v.

The thing we call the 'granny lead' or the 'Destination charger' isn't a charger, but a fancy plug that tells the car what kind of outlet it's plugged into, so it won't overload the circuit.

Superchargers, though, they handle 10x or more the power - and so they're pretty huge! The actual hardware is the size of a commercial fridge and is tucked away somewhere on the edge of the charging lot. And what they are varies base upon the type of grid connection, any batteries or solar attached to the station, etc. So they can be really specialized.

In that case, when you plug them in, the car says 'oh!' an swaps the terminals from the little charger to directly to the battery bus. And then it just gives sensor data to the charger so it can pump in the right amount for the charging infrastruction and the car. Because they do this balancing act, they can go way beyond the nameplate amps for just long enough to get your car charged super-fast.

-Crissa
Well knowing this now, the S2 Del Mar has only L1 or L2 charging, so I assume the hardware and software required for that switch between AC and DC charging is not present in that bike. It's kinda pointless to use a supercharger with a converter magic box to convert the DC back to AC for the bike to then just convert it back to DC into battery as is default. Your still only getting L2 charging speeds and adding the extra cost of the magic box and the extended charging times at the super charger.

I am curious if livewire plans on allowing the del Mar battery and electronics present on the battery section to be swapped out in the future if they do eventually offer an arrow architecture battery pack with level 3 charging.

The whole point of this new arrow architecture system they are switching to is that the battery is the frame similar to the cybertruck. So the steering column and rear suspension/wheel both get mounted to the main battery as if it were the frame.

That would be a nice upgrade or expensive option to swap out say the s2 del Mar battery and charging module for the planned s4 range bikes battery and charging module. Their master plan shows within the arrow architecture the s2 del Mar is the middle weight bike model, with s3 being a light weight scooter option in conjunction with kymco and the s4 range as a heavy weight cruiser option which I expect will go back to L3 charging similar to the LW1. Ideally those s2 and s4 battery modules are essentially interchangeable.
 

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They probably cut costs by going with a 100v battery instead of a 400v architecture like in the original Livewire. That wouldn't be CCS compatible, but it would be alot cheaper.

-Crissa
 
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Zero just dropped prices on all their models by 1k on the low end models and 4k on the high end models in response to livewire del Mar starting deliveries.

Zero SR is now 17k with twice the range but less performance than the del Mar at 15.5k. the heat is on for livewire to respond and try to jump start their floundering sales. With only like 6 lw1 sales in q2 and as far as I can tell only about 10-20 del Mar Launch editions sold in the month since they started delivering at the end of q3.

My finances and job changed for the better, so I actually decided to upgrade my reservation to a launch edition as they had many cancellations once the range was announced. Deliveries are on hold again, after the first 10-20 due to what appears to be an accessory 12v battery drain that was discovered on a few of the first early deliveries. My bike was supposed to be ready two weeks ago and I'm still waiting for an update on when they will restart deliveries. Have been told within this month. So this is a make or break moment for livewire with a very up hill battle due to the lack of l3 charging on the del Mar with the low range limiting it to really only a city commuter. And the zero price pressure is only going to make that battle harder.

https://electrek.co/2023/10/03/cheaper-electrics-zero-motorcycles-announces-permanent-price-drops/
 

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The Livewire del Mar is cuter, but I wouldn't say it has better performance than an SR. They're very similar, though. It's better than an S, but I don't think better than an SR.

The del Mar is cuter, slightly lighter;
The SR states a higher top speed, higher charging speed, bigger battery;
Acceleration is stated to be the same between the two, so who knows?

Also, being an older bike means the Zero has more third-party kits for it to raise the charge speed even more.

-Crissa
 
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The Livewire del Mar is cuter, but I wouldn't say it has better performance than an SR. They're very similar, though. It's better than an S, but I don't think better than an SR.

The del Mar is cuter, slightly lighter;
The SR states a higher top speed, higher charging speed, bigger battery;
Acceleration is stated to be the same between the two, so who knows?

Also, being an older bike means the Zero has more third-party kits for it to raise the charge speed even more.

-Crissa
Zero SR..
74 hp
122 ft lbs torque

104 mph max
0-60: 3.61 sec
weight: 414 lbs

del mar
84 hp
194 ft. lbs torque

103 mph max
0-60: 3 sec
weight: 436 lbs

This is where my comment that the performance is better on the del mar. Its got a ton more torque, more hp and faster acceleration. But the zero beats it hands down with range and charging speeds.
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