Get Your Pulse Up

With the LiveWire One, Harley-Davidson's electric spinoff brand makes a statement: A motorcycle should make you feel things

- Hannah Elliott

The LiveWire One electric motorcycle has a slightly confusing heritage: It’s the first offering from the new LiveWire brand within Harley-Davidson Inc., a division that will soon be spun off and publicly traded via a special purchase acquisition company.

But Harley had an EV before, also called LiveWire, which it made from 2019 to 2020. (Recalls and high pricing rather damped its reception.) LiveWire the brand arrived last year with the debut of the $22,799 LiveWire One. A $1.77 billion deal to merge with a SPAC called AEA-Bridges Impact Corp. has been planned since at least 2020. A spokesperson said it will happen in “the first half of 2022.” (We’re still waiting.) When it does, Harley-Davidson will own 74%, according to the proposed ownership structure.

Marketplace ninjutsu didn’t concern me, though, as I sat at a stoplight recently near the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. I was more curious about the gentle pulse I could feel—sorry, there’s no delicate way to put this— between my legs.

This wasn’t the loud, rattling vibration you’d expect from Harley’s piston-pumping V-Twins beloved by the Hells Angels. It felt more like sitting on a slightly winded horse. Or wearing pants so tight you can feel your heartbeat in your hamstrings.

It could be my own adrenaline, I thought. I had just darted up a hill, then dropped underground in a street area called Lower Grand. Or was it the brakes? Maybe some sort of regenerative technology had them throbbing to gain energy.