Thinking about the long-term, what sort of warranty term should we expect the lithium-ion battery to have, how long should a battery like this last us till it needs to be changed, what might it cost for a LiveWire replacement battery?

For the sake of comparison, what are other motorcycle companies offering for warranties?


For apples-to-apples, lets stick to electric motorcycle warranties.


Brammo offers a 5-year, 50,000-mile warranty that retroactively applies not only to new purchases, but to all previously purchased motorcycles. Furthermore, the warranty transfers for free to the next owner, or the next, or the next.
http://www.brammo.com/battery_warranty/


Zero Motorcycles also offers a 5-year, 100,000-mile (Zero S, SR, DS) or 50,000-mile (Zero FX) battery warranty, but a fee must be paid for the warranty to transfer to the next owner.
http://www.zeromotorcycles.com/warranty/


Mission Motorcycles offers a 2-year, 60,000-mile battery warranty.
https://www.mission-motorcycles.com/r
https://www.mission-motorcycles.com/rs


Lito Green Motion offers a 2-year warranty, but not specifically for the battery.
http://www.litogreenmotion.com/faq


Brutus, which offers electric cruisers with more battery capacity, more speed, and more range, unfortunately says nothing about a warranty.
http://brutusmotorcycle.com

Thanks a lot for posting this, it provides a great look at what to expect. Getting a 5 year/xx,xxx mile warranty from harley on the livewire would be awesome.

5 years for the warranty sounds pretty fair to me. 2 years is a little worrying. The length of warranty that a company is willing to give you really says something about how much they believe in their product. After all, if the product doesn't break down then the warranty will not cost the manufacturer anything. You need to believe that your product is going to work for more than 2 years if you want me to believe it is a good quality product.

ESPECIALLY since it is 'new' having a lengthy warranty term like a 5 year term can really get people to buy it as they will feel that they really have not much to worry about for those years. In turn it can help them really kick off sales and be the leader they want to in this segment and REALLY raise the bar.

or the longer the warranty the more worried you should be. Longer means they are worried about consumers screaming bloody murder. Remember something that doesn't break needs no warranty at all

being a new product it will need it to have people more at ease, as everyone knows new products like this do show up more problems than one that's already a few years into production

that a reason for me to get rid of it before the warranty is up, i hate to think how much things will cost without the aid of warranty.

A long warranty on the entire bike would be seen as a plus to me. Though even more important is the knowledge upfront of the expected life of the batteries and replacement cost when their time is up.

Ideally, getting the batteries to recharge at or near the typical refuel time for an I.C.E. powered machine should be a goal. The longer the recharge time, the greater the battery capacity (mileage) should should be. Alternately, a lesser capacity battery could be tolerated if you had a quick recharge. Only a large capacity battery with short recharge cycle will make for a near seamless transition from the convenience of the I.C.E. infrastructure. The other alternates are workable but will require adjustments of lifestyle/distance traveling abilities.

Another way could be that nobody ever actually owns the batteries. They would be changed for fresh with each 'refuel' stop. That requires a major infrastructure investment but then again so does any electric idea including the recharge points that electric cars use.

Now to really go off the dream end of the scale. Wireless charging/direct power supply as you drive down the road. Bikes could be very light without any batteries or only a bare minimum for traveling to and from the 'grid'. Tron lightcycles anyone?

I know tesla wanted to setup charging stations that not only tesla owners can use but just about anyone, and they're going to start building them along main routes that take people from one major city to the other.