Harley-Davidson’s LiveWire launches first electric cruiser motorcycle, S2 Mulholland
LiveWire, the all-electric motorcycle company spun out of Harley-Davidson’s electric motorcycle division, has just unveiled its latest electric motorcycle. The new LiveWire S2 Mulholland is the brand’s first cruiser electric motorcycle, and in fact the first cruiser of any major electric motorcycle maker.
It might not look quite like a typical H-D cruiser. Gone are the chrome pipes and leather bar tassels. Instead, LiveWire is calling the S2 Mulholland a “performance cruiser”, and it’s got the specs to back that up.
A 3.3 second 0-60 mph time adds sportiness to the laidback cruiser geometry with taller bars and a more relaxed-looking ride. The use of a 19-inch front wheel and 17-inch rear also gives the bike a squatter rear end.
There’s no cruiser frame, but that’s because there’s not really a frame at all. Instead, the S2 Mulholland uses the Arrow platform seen on the S2 Del Mar, which is centered around a structural battery that allows for multiple bikes to be built around a similar architecture.
When Harley-Davidson’s electric motorcycle brand LiveWire rolled out the S2 Del Mar on a versatile new platform two years ago, we knew it was likely the first of several bikes to share that Arrow setup. We speculated that the next bike could be a cruiser format, and now we’re finally getting a look at that very model in the S2 Mulholland.
Despite sharing the same foundation, the S2 Mulholland certainly carries a bold new design.
As the company explained, “Mulholland represents a shift in design at LiveWire as the company has reimagined the profile and silhouette of the motorcycle—traditionally informed by the gas tank—while also using sustainable materials in key components for the first time.”
That includes minimizing petroleum-based plastics wherever possible, such as in the seat, bodywork, and secondary plastic components.
Hemp bio-composites are used in the fenders, the radiator shrouds and wiring caddies are made from a type of nylon produced from recycled ocean fishing nets, and the seat is made of recyclable silicone instead of leather or vinyl.
On the powertrain side, the S2 Mulholland shares a considerable amount of hardware with the S2 Del Mar, including a 10.5 kWh battery with a 78-minute recharge time on Level 2 charging.
However, it sports a higher city range of 121 miles (194 km) compared to the S2 Del Mar’s 113 miles (181 km), perhaps indicating that they’ve found a way to make the 62 kW (84 hp) motor a bit more efficient.
That range turns into 73 miles (117 km) on the highway at 55 mph (88 km/h). For reference, I own a LiveWire S2 Del Mar and I find that I get around 1 mile per battery percent when I’m in the city and sticking to roads that are posted up to around 45 mph, with occasional sprints up to 55 mph. But it sounds like the S2 Mulholland should do slightly better than the S2 Del Mar on range.
A big part of the bike will likely be its customization options, which LiveWire sounds ready to support.
As the company added, “a range of S2 Mulholland accessories including passenger seats and pegs, windscreens, soft and hard bags, luggage racks, and cosmetic pieces will be launching to further add to the unique riding experience and visual appeal of S2 Mulholland.”
The bike is now available across LiveWire and Harley-Davidson dealerships in North America, where it carries a price of US $15,999 and CAD $21,999.
The S2 Del Mar expanded to Europe several months after its US launch, though international riders will need to wait until 2025 for the S2 Mulholland to enter international markets.
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EV sales kept up their momentum in December 2024, with incentives playing a big role, according to the latest Cox Automotive’s Kelley Blue Book report.
December’s strong EV sales saw an average transaction price (ATP) of $55,544, which helped push the industry-wide ATP higher, according to Kelley Blue Book. The December ATP for an EV was higher year-over-year by 0.8%, slightly below the industry average, and higher month-over-month by 1.1%. Tesla ATPs were higher year-over-year by 10.5%.
Incentives for EVs remained elevated in December, although they were slightly lower month-over-month at 14.3% of ATP, down from 14.7% in November.
EV incentives were higher by an impressive 41% year-over-year and have been above 12% of ATP for six consecutive months. Strong sales incentives, which averaged more than $6,700 per sale in 2024, were one reason EV sales surpassed 1.3 million units last year, according to Cox Automotive, a new record for volume and share.
(My colleague Jameson Dow reported yesterday, “In 2024, the world sold 3.5 million more EVs than it did in the previous year … This increase is larger than the 3.2 million increase in EV sales from the previous year – meaning that EV sales aren’t just up, but that the rate of growth is itself increasing.”)
Kelley Blue Book estimated that in December, approximately 84,000 vehicles – or 5.6% of total sales – transacted at prices higher than $80,000 – the highest volume ever. KBB lumps gas cars and EVs together into this luxury vehicle category, so this is where Tesla Cybertruck is slotted.
However, Tesla bundles sales figures of Cybertruck with Model S, Model X, and Tesla Semi(!) into a category it calls “other models,” so we don’t know for sure exactly how many Cybertrucks Tesla sold in Q4, much less in December. However, Electrek‘s Fred Lambert estimates between 9,000 and 12,000 Cybertrucks were sold in Q4, and that’s not a stellar sales figure.
What will January bring when it comes to EV ATPs? What about tax credits? Check back in a month and I’ll fill you in.
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Tesla is now claiming that Cybertruck was the ‘best-selling electric pickup in US’ last year despite not even reporting the number of deliveries.
There’s a lot of context needed here.
As we often highlighted, Tesla is sadly one of, if not the most, opaque automakers regarding sales reports.
Tesla doesn’t break down sales per model or even region.
For comparison, here’s Ford’s Q4 2024 sales report compared to Tesla’s:
You could argue that Tesla has fewer models than Ford, and that’s true, but Tesla’s report literally has two lines despite having six different models.
There’s no reason not to offer a complete breakdown like all other automakers other than trying to make it hard to verify the health of each vehicle program.
This has been the case with the Cybertruck. Tesla is bundling its Cybertruck deliveries with Model S, Model X, and Tesla Semi deliveries.
Despite this lack of disclosure, Tesla has been able to claim that the Cybertruck has become “the best-selling electric pickup truck” in the US in 2024:
It very well might be true. Ford disclosed 33,510 F-150 Lightning truck deliveries in the US in 2024 while most estimates are putting Cybertruck deliveries at around 40,000 units.
Those are global deliveries, but Tesla only delivered the Cybertruck in the US, Canada, and Mexico in 2024, and most of the deliveries are believed to be in the US.
However, there’s essential context needed here, as we highlighted in our recent ‘Tesla Cybertruck sales are disastrous‘ article.
First off, Tesla had a backlog of over 1 million reservations for the Cybertruck that it has been building since 2019. This led many to believe Tesla already had years of demand baked in for the truck and that production would be the constraint.
However, based on estimates, again, because Tesla refuses to disclose the data, Cybertruck deliveries were either flat or down in Q4 versus Q3 despite Tesla introducing cheaper versions of the vehicle and ramping up production.
Again, that’s after just about 40,000 deliveries.
Furthermore, with almost 11,000 deliveries in Q4 in the US, Ford more likely than not outsold Cybertruck with the F-150 Lightning in Q4.
Electrek’s Take
Tesla is in damage control here. There’s no doubt that it is having issues selling the Cybertruck.
Inventory is full of Cybertrucks and Tesla is now discounting them and offering free lifetime Supercharging.
Tesla is great at ramping up production, and it’s clear the Cybertruck is not production-constrained anymore. It is demand-constrained despite having over 1 million reservations.
Again, those reservations were made before Tesla unveiled the production version, which happened to have less range and cost significantly more.
The upcoming cheaper single motor version should help with demand, but I have serious doubts Tesla can ramp this program up to more than 100,000 units in the US.
As a reminder, Tesla installed a production capacity of 250,000 units annually and Musk said he could see Tesla selling 500,000 Cybertrucks per year.
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