Since this morning’s remarks I’ve had some thoughts back and forth. On the one hand, an electric Harley, with no VARROOOM seems anemic. A Wimpy Davidson, maybe. Not really a HARLEY! OTOH, an electric Harley will prolly go 0 to 100 mph in 6 seconds or so; nearly SILENTLY. No big husky gasoline Harley will even come close to that. So I’m torn as to how I should regard the new electrics.
I would have to be quite well-to-do to ever consider owning a Harley Davidson: They are too expensive to buy and to maintain. I don’t care about the sound. I’m not into status symbols. I’ve owned several motorcycles and I just like to cruise. I would be intimidated by owning something that high-maintenance and expensive. Like on a HD if you just break a taillight or something just the part itself is like $200. I’ve known a bunch of Harley mechanics and almost none of them, if they did own a HD, rode it around town/to work, etc. (They will ride noisy bikes like Triumphs and so on but if a customer says “make it louder” - yeah, they’ll try within reason, but a lot of the time it’s impractical and will void the warranty to, for example, keep the timing really slow so that you keep having to rev to keep the engine from stalling at a light.)
I think there would be a lot of advantages to an electric bike if you just want it for transportation.
Either way, I can’t afford it, though! So this is all academic!