Harley-Davidson Electric Scooter Design Filings

Dennis Chung
by Dennis Chung

Lightweight electric urban mobility vehicle inches closer to production

A little over a year ago, Harley-Davidson revealed two electric two-wheeler concepts, an electric mountain bike and a scooter that resembled an old Briggs & Stratton minibike. Today, the European Union Intellectual Property Office published multiple design filings that give us a peek at what the production version of that electric scooter may look like.

Until now, the only images of the scooter Harley Davidson has released were for the original concept, a video of a prototype being ridden during X Games, and a single image of an updated concept tucked away on Harley-Davidson’s website (shown below).

Thanks to the design filings, we now have a better look at the bike from multiple angles, as well as a look at the electric motor and battery unit. Harley-Davidson submitted multiple filings to the EUIPO, showing different parts of the scooter. The designs were all filed Oct. 23, 2019, but only fully registered and published today.

The design filings look fairly similar to the bike in the photo above, and is much further along than the original concept shown last year. The frame looks much more refined, with the electric drive unit no longer serving as a load bearing part of the chassis. The floorboards are also further improved, compared to the sawed-off skateboards that were bolted onto the original concept. The ring headlight remains, but the updated concept design adds a combination tail light/license plate assembly.

The electric drive unit in particular looks production-ready, compared to the blocky black box on the original concept. The scooter remains belt-driven, The design filing looks further advanced than even the drive unit on the color photo with the addition of mounting points. There’s also a small, circular shape right ahead of the motor that is not present in the photo; based on their location, these are likely buttons for ejecting the battery.

As these filings are merely for the appearance of the various parts, there are no technical details included for the bike, the motor or the engine. The bottom view of the battery unit, however, does give us an idea of how its connectors are laid out.

There are a few parts missing in the illustrations. The designs lack brakes (though there are mounting points on the fork for the front brakes), grips, hand controls and mirrors, all of which can be easily added at any point.

The as-yet-unnamed electric scooter is part of Harley-Davidson’s larger plan to grow by expanding into new segments. This lightweight electric vehicle isn’t designed for H-D’s existing core. Instead, as the slide from the company’s Q3 presentation in September shows, Harley-Davidson is targeting customers who are curious about the brand, but do not necessarily think of themselves as potential Harley riders.

Priced appropriately, the electric scooter could establish a niche audience for Harley, though naturally, we’d have to see what kind of performance figures and battery details the Harley-Davidson will offer.

Dennis Chung
Dennis Chung

Dennis has been a part of the Motorcycle.com team since 2008, and through his tenure, has developed a firm grasp of industry trends, and a solid sense of what's to come. A bloodhound when it comes to tracking information on new motorcycles, if there's a new model on the horizon, you'll probably hear about it from him first.

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