When many riders hear about a new electric motorcycle, they tend to compare it to the flagship machines that dominate the headlines. Bikes like those from Zero or LiveWire have shown that electric motorcycles can be fast, powerful, and technologically impressive. They’ve also shown that they can be expensive.
But a much more interesting battle may be happening lower down the power scale.
Recent news that LiveWire has begun production of its upcoming S4 Honcho has put the spotlight on what many people are calling a “125cc-equivalent” electric motorcycle. That description can be a little confusing because electric motorcycles don’t really have engine displacement. There are no pistons moving up and down, after all, and so there aren’t any cc’s to speak of.
Instead, “125cc-equivalent” is really a way to describe the overall riding experience using legacy language from the olden times, when motorcycles relied on repeated small explosions for locomotion.
Those descriptors put electric motorcycles in classes roughly comparable in speed and power to gasoline-powered motorcycles.
