Harley-Davidson delivery and production stop

Harley-Davidson stops production and delivery for 14 days.

The Harley-Davidson Motor Company has started production for 14 days and the reason given is that there are problems with a third party manufacturer who informed the Motor Company on May 17th that there is a problem in connection with and compliance with the legal requirements for this component.

At the moment, it is not known exactly which component is involved. On request at Harley-Davidson expects to be able to report on this in more detail next week.

I would rule out that it could be a technical problem, because then the authorized dealers would be informed immediately not to deliver any vehicles and that is not the case. According to Harleysite information, the delivery stop applies internationally and for the European market, only for the Harley-Davidson motorcycles that are traveling by ship and also the motorcycles that are still in the customs port of Rotterdam, according to my latest information. It currently affects the Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin and York, Pennsylvania plants.

Harley-Davidson's new cooperation partner Ford is showing us just how fast things can go. Ford has installed mobile phone chips for which it has no license rights. A court has now imposed a sales ban on the vehicles in which the chip is installed and for which there is no license. The company is accused of patent infringement, Wirtschaftswoche has an article about this online.

The Harley-Davidson share goes into decline

Let's wait and see what happens with Harley-Davidson could be the problem. In general, Harley-Davidson is not exactly on the sunny side at the moment, especially in Europe the mood is very poor. The Share price has fallen by more than 20% since January. It should also be mentioned that the markets are generally losing ground across the board. But the Harley-Davidson share is increasingly losing the confidence of investors and when large hedge funds pull out, the sea quickly becomes choppy.

There is a good report on this in „Der Aktionär“

The European market is on the sidetrack!

Making profits Harley-Davidson in the USA at the moment. The weak euro and high transportation costs make the European market not particularly interesting. The Harley-Davidson dealers are fighting for every bike, which is no easy task at the moment, as the cost apparatus continues to run and the delivery forecast for 2022 is very poor.

There is also the fear that Harley-Davidson will adopt the LiveWire concept as a blueprint for the Harley-Davidson business at some point in the future as part of the hardware structuring, where there will only be one guy in the big cities with his iPad selling bikes that have previously been ordered online. In its current form, the current dealer can only be found as a workshop partner without customer contact; in my view, this scenario would go completely in the wrong direction, but LiveWire is taking this approach.

Is Harley-Davidson losing its ties to the community?

In this case, one could clearly say that the decision-makers at Harley-Davidson have not understood their community. They seem to have difficulty recognizing where Harley-Davidson's real strength lies. This is their customer base, which is scattered all over the world and is also internationally connected. A look at the Harley Owners Group is enough, there are over a million members in there and the company doesn't really use it. The big events are just as unique and the support for the organizers is getting less and less.

It hasn't really been easy for me in the last 12 months either; the current direction of the company is not really comprehensible.

Goodwill is not particularly in demand!

Just recently in Chemnitz at the Grand Opening, a biker came up to me and told me how disappointed he was with the company. His goodwill request was simply shot down. He was also concerned that the company didn't accommodate him at all and he didn't really find anyone to talk to about his problem. His statement was that the community is working, but the relationship with the company is increasingly breaking down, he is extremely disappointed, not with his dealer, who is no better off, but with the Motor Company itself. I can also say that I am increasingly hearing this problem from the authorized dealers, they are often left alone with the problems.

Why not simply increase production in the USA?

Now we have to ask ourselves, why don't they simply increase production in the USA and supply the European market from there? The punitive tariffs are history and Thailand could continue to assemble the product range for the Asian market.

We're not talking rocket science here, a motorcycle is easier to assemble than a complex car. If they don't build their own assembly plant in Europe, then they should get the Harley-Davidson motorcycle range back from the USA, they are a lot faster here and with lower transportation costs.

The end of the combustion engine is coming in 2035!

On the other hand, we also have to look ahead to the future, of course, when we take another look at Ford, who have just signed a petition to sell only electric vehicles from 2035. These are the current cooperation partners of Harley-Davidson!

We don't have to fool ourselves, it will be the same for the motorcycle scene. Politically, nothing will change for the time being, as we see time and again where people vote in elections. As long as the wind turbines are not erected in the city, nothing will change.

It is politically driven, private transport is not wanted in terms of climate policy and the high energy prices obviously have very little to do with the war in Ukraine, the oil companies are making a killing here, our state is not really interested in the concerns of the citizens and is coming up with a relief package, which is not one. This would be a very good time to place e-fuels on the market now. Just as we have developed into an EU debt union and the ECB is restructuring the southern states at our expense.

We can see that we are in a state of flux, let's see where the journey takes us!