The road ahead for LiveWire, an electric motorcycle Harley-Davidson launched four years ago, has been slowed by the lack of automotive EV charging stations, Harley executives said May 14 during the company’s annual shareholders meeting.
The U.S. Department of Transportation in February suspended its EV charging program and rescinded approval of state plans pending a review.
As recently as May 7, Wisconsin and more than a dozen other states sued the Trump administration, saying the federal government was illegally withholding billions of dollars awarded to states for building charging stations.
Electric-vehicle adoption has been slower than expected, partly as the result of a lack of charging infrastructure, according to Harley-Davidson CEO Jochen Zeitz, who is also chairman of LiveWire Group.
More: The power struggle at Harley-Davidson has ended with election of the entire company board
LiveWire has faced the same economic challenges much of the power sports industry has experienced, and it’s also been hurt by the slowed rollout of EV infrastructure.
“We very much rely” on the automotive charging stations, Zeitz said earlier in the month during a Harley-Davidson earnings call.
LiveWire was spun off by Harley-Davidson into a separate, publicly traded company in 2022 but remains largely funded by Harley. In the first three months of 2025, LiveWire posted an operating loss of $20 million. The company had around $3 million in revenue, down 42% from a year earlier.
The decline was due to lower sales of electric motorcycles and STACYC electric bikes, according to Harley-Davidson.
A total of 33 LiveWire electric cycles sold in the quarter
LiveWire sold only 33 electric motorcycles in the recent quarter. Harley-Davidson said it does not plan additional investment in LiveWire beyond a line of credit extended in the first quarter of 2024 of up to $100 million.
While the heavyweight electric motorcycle market remains limited in size, LiveWire is focused on what it can control, said Karim Donnez, the company’s chief executive officer.
“Expenses are down by over 30%,” Donnez said May 1.
Even with the challenges, LiveWire has made some progress.
It recently entered four additional countries, Poland, Portugal, Finland and Belgium, and introduced the LiveWire S2 Alpinista globally. It also introduced the first pedal-assist STACYC bicycle for teens and adults and secured the company’s first fleet customers, a police department in St. Cloud, Florida.
The S2 Patrol Del Mar and S2 Patrol Alpinista are police motorcycles aimed at urban patrol, event security, and motorcade duty, where agility and low operational noise are desirable.