In May 2021, Harley-Davidson CEO Jochen Zeitz announced that the company’s electric motorcycle brand, LiveWire, would be spun off into its own independent company. Although its motorcycles would continue to be built in Harley’s York, Pennsylvania manufacturing facility, LiveWire would become its own entity apart from the Motor Company.
Later that year, in December 2021, Harley made the followup announcement that it would soon be taking LiveWire public via a $1.8 billion special purpose acquisition company (or SPAC) merger in early 2022. Among other things, this deal brought experienced Taiwanese motorbike manufacturer Kymco into the mix—a fact that’s important for some of LiveWire’s eventual plans to introduce small-displacement electric equivalents for a variety of international markets for its S3 lineup.
