IS THE END OF HD CONNECT NEAR?
In short, YES! Harley-Davidson will discontinue HD Connect again as of August 31, 2020.
In 2020, Harley-Davidson's service just started and now suddenly, END, OVER and OVER. Owners of 2020 Touring, Trike and CVO models can still use the service free of charge until the end of August, after which it ends.
THE APP WILL RUN FREE FOR LIVEWIRE CUSTOMERS UNTIL 2023
Only LIVEWIRE owners will have the opportunity to use the service until 2023. Anyone who has taken out a multi-year subscription will have their contribution refunded.
THE REASONS FOR THE SHUTDOWN
It is not yet known why Harley-Davidson is so suddenly discontinuing the actually good service. HD Connect has been activated for the large tourer, trike, CVO models and the LIVEWIRE, the 2020 electric motorcycle from Harley-Davidson. It was intended to significantly improve connectivity to the Harley for the rider, at least that was the plan. The alarm system formed a unit with GPS and allowed the bike to be located via cell phone if it was connected to the cell phone. In the event of an attempted theft, a silent alarm would have been triggered and now, in the event of a theft, it remains completely silent, without an alarm horn. This feature is actually particularly interesting for insurers, where some of them give you extra bonus points for additional security measures.
I know that some Harley-Davidson technicians from the USA drove around with us last year for testing purposes. This was intended to find out how bad our cell phone coverage really is, because no one expected it to be so bad. They may have wanted to counteract this through bundling, but we'll find out whether that's one of the problems or whether data protection is ultimately becoming more and more restrictive, or at least that was the last information I had on it.
SECURITY IS WORSE WITHOUT HD CONNECT AND NOW?
Now the question arises, what about the horn from the alarm system, which is no longer there as a result? How do you secure your machine?
The idea behind the APP was really not bad. You could create a route on your PC and send it to Boom! via the APP! Sending the Box GTS was completely easy. It's still possible with a USB stick, but it's a lot more complicated and no longer up-to-date.
Communication with the customer stalls
However, what annoys some customers the most is the poor communication. Harley-Davidson might be wise to invest in additional staff for customer support. It could simplify a lot of things and relieve the burden on the employees who ultimately have to sort everything out. Because you can't expect the European customer to call a number in the USA if they have questions specifically about this topic.
Harley-Davidson on austerity measures
Unfortunately, Harley-Davison has just announced that they will be cutting approximately 750 jobs in the near future as part of restructuring measures. It is clear that such reports cause some unrest among employees in the company. Harley-Davidson is repositioning itself and there will probably be a completely new direction. The additional plant in Thailand and the conversion are costing Harley-Davidson a lot of money, plus the disruptions caused by Corona and the import of raw materials from Europe will probably still cost the company punitive tariffs. After the introduction of punitive tariffs on Harley-Davidson motorcycles from the USA to the EU, they were levied by the EU and, in return, levied by the USA on raw materials from the EU.
The management level has also been cleaned up a bit and Harley-Davidson shares are currently rising again, which are actually good signs.
Why they want to scrap the APP is questionable, my first information about it is that it has something to do with data protection, we'll see, as soon as there's something new about it, you'll find out on the Harley site.
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The completely excessive data protection, especially in Germany, is a brake in many ways, from the criminal prosecution by our police to the lack of Streetview from Google in Germany (the only country in the world where Streetview does not work) to things like modern route planning. And why? Because everyone feels persecuted by left-green agitation and advertising and misunderstood data use are enough to reject useful applications.