Jay Leno: Electric Harley

I'm out road testing this electric Harley and it's been a wild ride so far. The first thing I noticed is how quiet it is. Unlike traditional gas-powered Harleys, which can be heard from miles away, this bike is almost completely silent. It makes me curious to see how much electricity it uses when cruising on the freeway at 65 or 70.

As I take it up and see what kind of electricity it sucks down, I'm down to 46 miles now. Let's go a few miles on the freeway and see what kind of electricity usage there is. The bike handles nice and drives nice, it's a real pleasure to ride. But I have to ask, how much electricity does this thing use? I think it would be great if we could customize this bike, maybe add some Harley flair.

As I take a look at the bike, I notice that it has some unique features. For one, it has an incredible braking system, with just one disc in the front, but it's more than enough combined with regen to stop on a dime. The regen is impressive, and I love how smoothly it works. It feels like I'm not even using the brakes at all.

I also think that having an on-board charging system would be a great feature. Just imagine being able to plug in your bike and charge it up while you're watching the game with your friend. You could then get back home again, without having to worry about running out of battery. That would be a great peace of mind.

I also think that the throttle on this bike is unique. It's not just a matter of rolling off the throttle, but rather using it as a way to generate electricity and slow down the bike. I'd love to see more regen when you roll off the throttle, so you don't have to use the brakes at all.

Overall, I'm really impressed with this electric Harley. It's got Harley styling, it handles nice, it drives nice, and it feels like a production-ready motorcycle. The only thing I'd change is maybe add an on-board charging system and more regen when rolling off the throttle.

As I take one last look at the bike, I notice that it has some unique features. It's got Harley DNA all over it, if you put a black light on it. But in a good way! The quality and attention to detail are impressive, and it feels like something that will stand out from the crowd.

I want to commend Harley-Davidson for not sticking their head in the sand and making the same thing year in year out. They're embracing change and moving forward with this electric bike. It's a great move, and I think it's going to be part of the future of motorcycles.

As I wrap up my test ride, I'm left wondering what other innovations we can expect from Harley-Davidson in the future. With the rise of electric bikes and motorcycles, it's clear that they're committed to making something new and exciting. And who knows? Maybe one day we'll see a completely electric Harley-Davidson lineup.

For now, though, I'm just happy to have had the chance to ride this incredible bike. It's been a pleasure, and I think you should take it for a spin too. Whether you're a Harley fan or just looking for something new, this electric bike is definitely worth checking out.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso the electric motorcycle is almost as old as the electric car in fact the first electric motorcycle was patented in 1897. here's the original patent by the beginning of the 20th century a lot of magazines are doing stories about the popularity of electric motorcycles like this one in popular mechanics in 1911. and here's my favorite thing about this article look it is claimed will run from 75 to 100 miles on a single battery charge but then nothing happened for about a hundred years in the last decade or so there's been renewed interest in electric motorcycles from a lot of manufacturers including one of the biggest take a look welcome another episode of jay leno's garage as you know we like motorcycles here and harley davidson considered by many to be a very conservative motorcycle company has come out with a very innovative product i think it's really exciting now i know if you're a harley traditionalist don't start boo-hooing right away just hear me out this is very very cool this is something called project livewire and it's an all-electric harley which is something i never thought i'd see in my lifetime but it shows that the company is progressing and coming up with new ideas and it's a really good looking bike but isn't any good we'll find out i want you to meet ken osterman ken come on in you know what head of global what is it global marketing operations global marketing operations okay you know i was stunned because we all think of harley as sort of v twins and you know water cooled head well no okay maybe all right i'll accept the water cool heads but this is a totally innovative new product it's uh be getting a lot of buzz and it's and it's a good looking motorcycle tell us what we have here well thank you jay and excited to be here so what you're looking at is what we call project livewire and isn't it is intended to be an opportunity for customers to get on an all-electric authentic harley-davidson electric motorcycle and give us some feedback and tell us what they think now i'm curious to see what the feedback is because harley-davidson like porsche porsche builds a 911 they built it forever and anytime they deviate from the 911 even if it's a superior product people just want the 911. we always think of the traditional harley guys they want the loud pipes they want the v-twin um tell me the feedback you've been getting so you know if you take a step back and think about our country so america at its best has been about america going through reinvention and multicultural diversity and like america harley has gone through many reinventions in our 111 year history and what we're looking at here is really just our next chapter in reinvention and so the feedback we've been getting from customers has been absolutely fantastic and so we i was in new york a few weeks ago where we revealed this and then again in milwaukee at our museum and so to talk to customers young old male female traditional riders riders off of other brands you know the big consistent is a huge grin because it is just an incredibly exhilarating round yeah and this is not to give you the impression that oh they're going to stop building traditional harley-davidson to make this they'll always make the either oil cooled or air-cooled v-twin whereas this is just a new product absolutely and so you know we have some fantastic existing products with our you know air-cooled v-twin products you know and things like project rushmore that just came out and even the new street 500 and 750 designed to appeal to younger more urban customers and and this represents an opportunity to reach out to even more customers now tell us about this because they've been other electric motorcycles but never has a motorcycle company as big as harley davidson come out with one most have been little startups and some of them are pretty good you know they're they're actually okay uh a lot of people feel electricity is the best way to propel a vehicle they certainly felt that the beginning of the last century but then the gas engine kind of overtook a little bit but i like electric vehicles the biggest problem of course being range now the range with this one is what so this is optimized as a really a demonstration vehicle and so you know what what we're doing with the feedback and one of the questions is asking customers what sort of range would you like to get and so we're getting that feedback from our customers this particular vehicle as it's set up has a range of about 53 miles right okay and so you know for the demo experience that's perfect because they're going out on a quick ride and giving us their feedback um and you know the technology is evolving and we're continuing to watch where electric vehicle technology is going with battery chemistry and heat management and everything to see well that's the thing i mean when you're on a harley at least for me i'm on it if not all day most of the day and the trouble with the electric is you got to drive somewhere and then stay there you know that's kind of the problem but like you say they are working on that so let's go over the vehicle itself you know it's interesting because it looks like it would have almost an inline four cylinder this almost looks like the bottom end of a bmw k bike it's nothing is sticking out and nothing is unattractive it's a really good looking motorcycle is this the whole battery pack here yeah so we have just an awesome team of designers and engineers back at our willy g davidson product development center in the milwaukee area and when they look at designing a motorcycle you know they think with a harley what is the jewel of course it's the motor right and just like a harley-davidson v-twin you know an electric harley-davidson is no different and so they chose to really focus in and highlight that longitudinally mounted motor right you know right there at the bottom so your engine is a cylindrical unit correct this is it right in here you know so yeah right down there and then that goes into oh it's not it's not this way oh no it's okay it's right down there and so it's it's that silver highlighted unit at the bottom is is the electric motor okay and they're using the traditional harley so it is it is a belt drive and it's a single speed gearbox that goes through and gives you just fantastic throttle response so it's 0 to 60 in just under 4 seconds okay not too bad that's not too bad yeah all right so our designers were looking at it you know they really focus first on the silhouette right and think about how does that motor how do the wheels fit and how does all of that flow together and they came up with an aggressive stance and you see the the great frame design and one of the things that's unique about this this is a cast aluminum frame that weighs only about 14 pounds so what's the whole bike weight so whole bike in total is about 463 pounds well that's not bad that's so that's pretty good actually considering you have what do you got here about 300 volts yeah it's about 300 volts okay we have of course a mono shock a lot of traditional motorcycles yeah fully adjustable inverted front forks here show a adjustable rear monoshock as well that's the sort of classic harley early sports they're kind of designed light looks like almost like a ch from 1950 exactly so you have this blend of both classic and there are a lot of harley-davidson racing cues in the vehicle right but this light's a great example of that blend of old and new and so you have both a combination of reflector and projector led technology and in fact the bike is full led lighting all around the part that doesn't quite work for me is this it almost seems like this should be more integrated in the shape of the light or rather just this almost looks like an iphone is kind of put there you know if they i would style that in a little bit more that's the only thing that that doesn't knock me out about it it's really a good looking bike and it's a nice size bike it's about the size of an 883 isn't it yeah i'd say somewhere about that size wheelbase wise you know i can tell you you know it's it's a fun bike it feels really good and comfortable for both small folks i'm on the smaller side obviously as well as big guys right and uh and or girls now do you have regen as well on the braking yeah so the bike has both traditional front and rear caliper brakes as well as regen okay and so when you're off the throttle and slowing down through the rear wheel it will regenerate and put more power in it's not adjustable regen it's just set correct okay it's the exception of maybe changing your fluid and your master cylinder there's no service to do here is it electric it's pretty much you got tires and you know tires and and that's about that's about it you know it's one of the i think things that's really exciting about this is that even for a relatively new rider you don't have a clutch to worry about right you don't have to shift you know you can really get on and go and it's it's it allows you to feel more connected to the road i know that's the feeling that i have when i ride this it's it's you know got a strong stance right but it's really nimble and great for cruising around urban areas or out on the open road a little bit right you know our engineers spent particular time focusing on and made deliberate decisions around the sound right you know to make sure that unlike noise it does make a sound and you know unlike other electric vehicles that are largely silent we wanted to engineer in a distinctive sound right and the best way i can think of to describe it is think of jet engine on an aircraft carrier okay and it's got a great powerful sound as is your and what is generating the sound is it an artificially generated sound is it a gear noise what is it so it's based on a gear noise so when we made a design decision to have a longitudinally mounted motor at the bottom there and that goes up through a bevel gear that then helps create that sound i mean it carries its weight down low it's it's it's comfortable nicely done okay so what if i was going to start this what do i do so couple things so first over here on the right you have an off and run to go ahead and start it we go from the off position to the run position and i carry what a fob in my pocket yeah there'll be a fob in a production version if and when we decide to bring it to market we'll go ahead and why don't you put the side stand up all right and you can see the system status so we've got you know 99 battery charge we've got 300 volts we see our battery temp and the ecu temp right and time to full charge zero so we're fully charged ready to go and we can select a mode we either have a range mode or a power ride and so in our range we have about 59 miles right and in the power mode we have 29. now let me ask you a question i'm riding along range and i see a guy in a kawasaki or something and i want to get on it a little bit do i have to hit power ride and switch over or to automatically go into it so i'll be honest i've been riding this quite a bit in fact we came out on on route 66 and we've been cruising around la even in range mode you can get on it and it just goes and so there isn't a huge difference between they just get a little more power you do get a little bit more power there okay and so but would i have to do that hit that and it would switch over yes and so actually to switch over you do need to be stopped oh you do you need to be stopped to switch power modes so just keep it in range mode all right so if we were to go into range mode we'll go ahead and touch that okay and we'll see the bike go ahead and get fired up we see a 1-1-1 here we see our range so you know i think it represents harley-davidson's 111 years of history this is our 111th year okay and i'm not sure if that's what the engineers actually meant it to represent but i think it works um we have power at zero percent right and we can actually touch this so it's touch screen we could also see throttle right or amps okay so we'll put that back to power okay and range at 99 we could touch that we could see you know our recharge and then our range and then finally down here we can look at uh various temperatures okay and finally of course you know you can reset right trip computer odometer things of that nature am i hot now am i ready to go what we're gonna do is press this press and hold the start button which is right there just like press and hold okay and then let go okay you've gone to zero miles per hour and if you twist you're gonna go i see okay i can feel it okay there you go and that's the noise you mentioned exactly okay well let's take this thing for a ride see how it goes you know it's safe to say it's not for the traditional harley rider but for someone who wants something that looks cool and wants to commute 20 30 miles each way each day it's pretty cool you know when the wrist watch first came out at the turn of the last century men wouldn't wear them because they thought they were bracelets like for women and they couldn't give them away and then they started giving them to people like jack dempsey and and other famous athletes and manly men to wear and once those guys started wearing wrist watches suddenly wrist watches became popular among men and that's probably what's going to happen here when you see an electric bike win the isle of man the tt that's when everything is going to change as much as i enjoy the sort of thumping sound of a big v twin there's nothing wrong with dead silence either top speed is about 92 miles an hour which is okay i guess um i would imagine that speed you're sucking down electricity pretty hard the problem of course is range you know when you have a vehicle like this it's fun you want to drive it all day and with the range of only 59 miles you're not gonna get too far you know it's a bit like flying a hang glider you don't hear any noise and you just sort of feel like you're one with the wind on this thing the absence of noise is really quite pleasant i think a bike like this will open up a whole new market for harley davidson because as traditionalists we like the traditional harley but i like to see that they're thinking ahead that they can be futurist to a certain extent at speed it's really quite pleasant handles nicely very very light bike doesn't feel close to 500 pounds i would say it's on par with a 500cc gas that we mentioned that's about the same i think i think it's a fair comparison the regen works quite well i think your brakes pad your brake pads would last forever boy the brakes in conjunction with the region are really terrific i know it's only got one discs on the front but that's all it needs throttle is wonderfully progressive you just roll it on and roll it off at no point does it lurch or jerk in any way you know i've got a couple of harleys with the foot clutch and the hand shift and there's so much stuff you have to do this is the complete opposite to that all the bikers i've come across so far seem to like it i haven't read i haven't got any negative feedback i'm sure they're those guys hey i know harley guys are still mad they went to overhead valve so you know y'all's gonna have a few of those guys you know most guys don't like electric bikes because they're not faster but in a couple of years you're going to see some amazing things and when electric motorcycles become faster and more convenient that's when the big revolution is going to change now see normally when i come up and down this street a couple of times the villagers come out with pitchforks and they have tortures and they're like i got that guy and then i have to take off because the thing is too loud or noisy whatever i can do it all day here and nobody even notices it makes it kind of fun as i mentioned the brakes are pretty incredible you've just got one disc in the front but it's more than enough combined with the regen you stop right now it handles nice it drives nice i'm curious to see how much electricity that sucks down when you're cruising on the freeway at 65 or 70. let's take it up and see what it does i'm down to 46 miles now let's go a few miles on the freeway and see what kind of electricity uses its speed hi it's jay leno how you doing electric harley oh yeah yeah we're just out road testing it can you hear it that thing is so noisy i can't hear my motorcycle have a good day anytime you can sneak up on the highway patrol they don't hear you that's a good thing i know if you've gotten a chance to watch the electric bike races of the island man it's really exciting i mean they're doing some amazing things they're not where the where the petrol powered bikes are yet of course but uh it's still pretty impressive you know you get real used to the lack of involvement all you do is twist the throttle and you go um i'll be honestly see how that works for harley riders because harley davidsons are among the most personalized vehicles in the world everybody that's got one makes theirs just a little bit different paint wheels something you know so i suppose you could customize this you know if you're a harley guy not a harley guy it would behoove you to stop by your local dealer and take one of these on a test drive it's pretty impressive well look there's one of those old-fashioned gas-powered harleys first of all i want to commend harley-davidson for not sticking their head in the sand and making the same thing year in year out you know that's what killed indian that's what killed the british motorcycle manufacturer they didn't change it just kept making the same thing and harley will continue to make that but this i think is at least part of the future some things i think the bike could use um i would like to see an on-board charging system i think peace of mind it'd be fun to write it to your friend's house pull a coiled up wire out of the frame and plug it in and charge it while you're watching the game at his place so you can get back home again i would love to see a regen on the throttle go the other you know you pull it this way it goes forward if you roll the throttle back i'd like to get more and more regen so i don't literally have to use the brakes at all i think that would be an interesting feature i mean it rides nice it handles nice it's it's very impressive and for a bike that's not a production motorcycle boy it the quality and the product it really feels production ready it's just so different from that that it makes it a unique riding experience just to hear nothing but the wind i know harley guys with the pipes and the noise but well you saw me sneak up on the highway patrolman i didn't even see me coming so that's fantastic anytime you can fly past those guys i don't notice oh you're gold so ken thank you very much ken come on in you've done a wonderful job well thank you it's really good tell willie g and the boys it's fun to kind of look to the future you know and and and this is what part of the future will be because let's face it if we want to keep riding those and have gas for those a lot of people are going to need to ride these and if you get a half the market riding these you extend the range of gasoline twice as far so uh i was impressed i i it's it's really good it's got harley styling you know if you put a black light on this thing you're gonna see harley dna all over it i know that sounds a little gross but you know what i'm talking about anyway uh willie g and the boys good job thanks ken thank you very much thanks for the time jake see you next week ah\n"