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BMW Taps Christof Lischka as New Head of Development

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Starting this month, BMW Motorrad will have a new name leading the direction of its motorcycle lineup, as Christof Lischka will take over as head of BMW Motorrad Development from Karl Viktor Schaller, who is retiring after fives years in the role.

As such, this means that Lischka will be responsible for finding the white spaces in BMW Motorrad’s product lineup – looking for opportunities in new segments and sectors, while also analyzing and refining the offerings that BMW already has on the showroom floors.

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Piaggio Group Reports Unit Sales Up 5.9% So Far This Year

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While the rest of the industry walks on pins and needles, the Piaggio Group is celebrating a strong first-half to the 2019 sales year, with overall unit sales up 9.2%.

That number isn’t just all Vespa scooters though (however, the Italian brand does sell quite a few of those), as Piaggio reports that its motorcycle sales saw a 14% bump in gross revenue.

The Italian conglomerate pegs the new Moto Guzzi V85 TT for the sales boom over last year, which is quite a feat since 2018 was a strong year for the Piaggio Group as well.

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MIC Begins to Form Long-Term Plan to Attract New Riders

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The motorcycle industry in the United States needs to attract new riders. This is a well-established fact, and we have already begun to see manufacturers catching on to this idea – most notably, Harley-Davidson with its “More Roads” business plan.

Now, the Motorcycle Industry Council (MIC) is rallying the troops to the cause, announcing a new long-term initiative to bring in new riders.

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Products

Shark Acquires the Nolan Helmet Brand

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Today we report some more business movement in the helmet space, as the French brand Shark has acquired the Italian brand Nolan.

The transaction actually involves the two brands parent companies, 2Ride Holding Group (Shark, Bering, Ségura, Bagster, and Cairn) and the Nolan Group (Nolan , Grex, and X-lite helmets), with the French business unit buying its Italian counterpart.

The acquisition sets up a strong European house of brands in the motorcycle industry, which should be positioned well to compete against other players like Alpinestars and Dainese/AGV with head-to-toe protection.

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Harley-Davidson Sales Slip & Fall 8% in Q2 2019

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Sales continue to slip and fall for Harley-Davidson, as we see from the company’s second-quarter earnings report, which was was released today. Worldwide, the Bar & Shield brand saw an 8% drop in Q2 sales for 2019, when compared to Q2 2018.

This breaks down to an 8% drop in sales for the United States, with international sales showing a similar decline of 8.9%. For comparison, the relevant heavyweight motorcycle industry was down 4.9% in the USA during the same time periods.

On the dollar side of the equation, Harley-Davidson reported a net income of $195.6 million earned, from a consolidated revenue of $1.63 billion in Q2 2019.

This is nearly a 20% drop in net income, when compared to the $242.3 million that Harley-Davidson made on the $1.71 billion in consolidated revenue in Q2 2018.

This news continues an obvious trend for Harley-Davidson, as its sales continue to shrink each year, which is affecting the company’s bottom line earnings.

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Analyst Gives Insights to Harley-Davidson Livewire Pre-Sales

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Tomorrow we will be among the first to ride the Harley-Davidson Livewire, the Bar & Shield brand’s first electric motorcycle.

The model marks a paradigm shift for the American company, as well as the motorcycle industry as a whole, so you can imagine that a great deal of attention will be on the machine’s debut.

Before we get our own first-hand experience with the bike, there is some talk about Harley-Davidson’s pre-sales activity on the Livewire.

BMO Capital Markets analyst Gerrick Johnson has tipped to Powersports Business that roughly 50% of Harley-Davidson’s initial batch of Livewire deliveries have deposits on them.

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Volkswagen Restructuring Plan Gets Union Support, But What Does It Mean for Ducati?

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On Tuesday, the Volkswagen Group struck a major deal with its union-back workforce, which will see the German automotive conglomerate begin a new restructuring plan.

The linchpin for the restructuring plan is a €1 billion commitment to make a new battery factory for future electric vehicle models, which will be located in Lower Saxony.

This is important because Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess has been on a mission to slim down the VW Group, but his workforce, more specifically its labor unions, have been resistant to this change, as it would inevitably mean fewer jobs for its labor force.

Now with a substantial commitment to create jobs in the battery cell production space, VW’s labor unions are more amenable to the idea of trimming VW’s non-core businesses, which has some big implications.

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News

Triumph Partners with Williams F1 & Others To Make Electric Motorcycles

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Call it the British Connection, because four firms from the United Kingdom have just agreed to partner on making electric two-wheelers and associated technologies. 

The collaboration is going to be a two-year deal between Triumph Motorcycles, Williams Advanced Engineering, Integral Powertrain Ltd.’s e-Drive Division, and WMG at the University of Warwick.

Additionally, the group will receive funding from the UK government’s Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and the Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) via Innovate UK.

As you might expect, the goal of the partnership is to develop and bring to market technologies that will help power the next generation of motorcycles, namely electric motorcycles.

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Ducati First Quarter 2019 Sales Up 5% Worldwide

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The 2019 model year is looking good for Ducati, with the Italian brand reporting a 5% sales increase in the first quarter of this year, over the same time period in 2018.

In total, Ducati sold 12,541 motorcycles in Q1 2019, compared to the 11,949 units it moved in Q1 2018, with most segments from the Italian manufacturer showing growth.

That growth was highlighted with strong sales for Hypermotard 950, though it is bookended with the superbike segment, which saw a noticeable drop (13.5%) at the start of this year.

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Harley-Davidson Sales Continue to Sink Worldwide

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Harley-Davidson is reporting its first-quarter results for 2019, and as you might expect, the Bar & Shield brand continues to sink with its worldwide sales figures. As such, Harley-Davidson saw sales decrease worldwide by 3.8% in Q1 2019, with US sales down 4.2% compared to the same time last year (international sales were down 3.3%).

This news continues a trend for Harley-Davidson, as it continues to see its sales figure moving downward, which is following the overall trend in the US motorcycle industry, where sales are down 4.7% in Q1 2019.

From a relative point of view, this news is perhaps not so bad for Harley-Davidson, as it outperformed the market (though it owns a considerable size of the relevant segments), and in the process of that, the American brand picked up marketshare in its home market

This is of course the business equivalent of escaping being eaten by lion, by merely out-running the person fleeing next to you.

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