Harley-Davidson LiveWire has been making big waves in the motorcycle world even before its production version was unveiled in November last year. With the LiveWire, Harley-Davidson became the first motorcycle manufacturer to introduce an all-electric model. Well, there have also been the likes of Zero around which have already started pulling over Tesla cars in police chases. (Click the link below to read more about this incident).
Focussing back on the tale of the Harley-Davison which was in a way the very first all-electric H-D motorcycle. The year was 1978 and the place was Honolulu, Hawaii. Forwarding-thinking engineer Steve Fehr from the Transitron Electric Corporation came up with idea that Harley-Davison should build an all-electric motorcycle. And to convince H-D, he built one himself.
Steve and a team from Transitron began work on an electric Harley. Below are the initial sketches of the team’s design. The base motorcycle for this project was a 1971 Harley-Davidson XLH Sportster.
The Sportster’s original 900cc petrol engine was obviously done away with. It was replaced with a 24V 90A electric motor, which was linked with a belt drive to a 4-speed automatic transmission. A proprietary controller was developed and added.
The 1978 electric Harley-Davidson was capable of 80 km/h of top speed and it did 0-51 km/h in under 6 seconds. These figures are actually better than some modern electric scooters.
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Steve and team proved that an all-electric Harley-Davison was could easily be built. But Harley didn’t think so and passed on the project. Later on, famed Harley-Davidson designer Brooks Stevens. Steve and Brooks then worked on the project and carried out 579 km of track testing in Wisconsin.
But after investing a lot of time and over $70,000, the project did not attract any other investors. The project bike was put in Brook Steven’s museum, where it stayed until his death in 1995 and was later auctioned by Sotheby’s for $11,000 in 2014. The year 2014 was also when the first official electric prototype by Harley-Davidson was rolled out of Milwaukee.
Source: Electrek
