跟读练习: Why Electric Motorcycles Are Failing and Nobody Will Admit It - 通过视频学习英语口语
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Every major motorcycle brand on the planet told you the same story.
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Electric motorcycles were coming and they were going to change everything.
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Harley -Davidson poured hundreds of millions into it.
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Zero motorcycles raised over $600 million from investors.
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Italian supercar engineers at Energica poured a decade of their lives into building the perfect electric sport bike.
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Tech startups in Vancouver, Stockholm, and London raised hundreds of millions more from backers who were convinced this was the next Tesla moment for two wheels.
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And for a while, if you watched the press conferences and read the headlines, you might have believed it was actually happening.
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But here is what none of these companies will tell you publicly.
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The premium electric motorcycle market in North America and Europe is not struggling.
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It is not in a transitional period.
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It is collapsing.
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And the numbers are so bad
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that the companies involved frame everything around market share percentages and future potential because raw sales figures tell a much harsher story.
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This is the story of how an entire industry bet on premium electric motorcycles before there was evidence
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that premium motorcycle buyers actually wanted them.
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Let's start with the number that tells you everything you need to know.
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Livewire is Harley -Davidson's electric motorcycle brand.
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They spun it off into its own publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange in 2022.
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They brought in investors, built a leadership team, launched new models, and positioned themselves as the future of American motorcycling.
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Harley literally bet its reputation on this brand.
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In 2025, Livewire sold 653 motorcycles worldwide for the entire year.
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Let that land for a second.
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653. That is not a monthly number.
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It is not a quarterly number.
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That is every Livewire motorcycle purchased by every customer in every country on earth across all 12 months of 2025.
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And the really wild part is this: it was actually an improvement.
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In 2024, they sold 612.
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So the year -over -year growth that Livewire celebrated in their annual Jesus.
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Livewire will tell you, and they do tell you in their Securities and Exchange Commission filings,
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that they hold roughly 70 % of all retail sales of street -legal electric motorcycles with 50
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or more horsepower in the United States.
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That is technically true.
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But when you do the math,
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it means the entire American premium 50 -plus horsepower electric street bike segment, every in 2025.
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For context, Harley -Davidson alone shipped roughly 130 ,000 gas -powered motorcycles that same year.
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A single midsize Honda dealership probably moves more inventory in 12 months than the entire premium electric motorcycle segment combined.
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But the sales numbers, as ugly as they are, do not even tell you the worst part.
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The financial losses behind those sales are absolutely staggering.
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In the first quarter of 2025,
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Livewire sold exactly 33 motorcycles worldwide while posting a $20 million consolidated operating loss as a company.
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33 bikes, $20 million gone.
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That includes research and development, corporate overhead, platform development, all of it, but the mismatch between what they are spending and what they are selling is extraordinary.
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This is a company that went public at a valuation of $1 .77 billion just three years earlier.
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For the full year, Livewire posted $75 million in operating losses against just $6 .1 million in actual motorcycle revenue.
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And here is the detail that really shows how sideways things went.
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Most of the company's total revenue of $25 .7 million dollars did not come from electric motorcycles at all.
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It came from Stacey YC, their children's electric balance bike business.
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The kids bikes outsold the real motorcycles by a factor of more than 30 to 1.
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By the fourth quarter of 2025, Livewire was running fire sale promotions,
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slashing $4 ,000 off the S2 Alpinista to get its price down to $11 ,999.
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61 % of the year's sales happened in that final quarter, juiced by aggressive incentives.
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The company's own filings admitted the revenue decline was driven by
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the impact of new incentives introduced in the third quarter of 2025.
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That is corporate speak, for we could not give these things away until we started practically giving them away.
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If Livewire's collapse were an isolated case, you could chalk it up to bad management or bad timing.
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But it isn't isolated, not even close.
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Zero Motorcycles has been building electric bikes longer than anyone.
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Founded in a garage in Santa Cruz, California, they have been at this since 2006.
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They have raised over $620 million from investors, including major backing from private equity firm Invas.
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They were supposed to be the proof of concept for this entire category.
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Instead, Xero hit a peak of 3 ,979 global sales in 2022, and then watched that number fall off a cliff.
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By 2024, they were down to 2 ,114 units.
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Through the first nine months of 2025, they had moved just 1 ,944 bikes, barely crawling ahead of the prior year,
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despite launching new off -road and scooter products.
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The internal turmoil tells you even more.
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In early 2024, Xero laid off roughly 10 % of its entire workforce and shut down its California assembly line,
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moving most manufacturing to the Philippines and the Netherlands.
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former Kia executive named Pierre Martin Boss in what was announced on a Friday morning with no transition period.
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If you have ever followed corporate leadership changes, you know that a same -day Friday CEO swap is almost never a planned succession.
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That is a firing.
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Employee reviews on Glassdoor paint a brutal picture.
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Workers described annual January layoffs as routine, leadership as product.
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One reviewer mentioned annual lawsuits filed against the company for false advertising, repeated quality issues, and safety concerns.
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And Zero is one of the survivors.
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If you want to see what happened to the companies that did not make it, The list reads like a war memorial.
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Energica was the Italian electric motorcycle maker that built the official race bike for the FIM Moto E World Cup.
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For motorcycle enthusiasts, that was a serious stamp of credibility.
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They had been in business for a decade, backed by American investment group Ideanomics, and they were supposed to prove that European engineering could solve the electric motorcycle puzzle.
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On October 14, 2024, Energica filed for bankruptcy judicial liquidation.
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The company had already slashed its workforce from 150 employees down to about 45,
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with the remaining workers on solidarity contracts paid by the Italian government's social security system.
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explanation cited the crisis in the electric market and the decline in sector investments.
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A decade of engineering, tens of millions in investment, and they could not sell enough bikes to keep the lights on.
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Cake was a Swedish electric motorcycle startup that everyone in the design world loved.
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sleek Scandinavian aesthetics, glowing media coverage, and roughly $74 million raised from venture capital.
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At their peak, they were valued near a billion dollars.
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On February 1st, 2024, they filed for bankruptcy after a lead investor pulled out during a funding round.
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The chief executive officer admitted they needed annual sales of 7 ,500 to 10 ,000 units just to break even.
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In their entire history, they had sold around 6 ,000 bikes total.
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And then there is Damon Motorcycles.
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which might be the most painful story in this entire space.
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Damon was the flashy Canadian startup that promised a 200 horsepower and 200 mile range hypersport motorcycle.
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They went public on NASDAQ in late 2024, claimed over $100 million in pre -orders from more than 3 ,000 customers,
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and looked like they were about to deliver on the dream.
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Instead, their stock price collapsed to less than a penny.
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The chief technology officer publicly walked out in early 2025.
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Their co -founder, chief financial officer, and board members resigned one after another.
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Headcount reportedly dropped from a peak of about 200 employees to 13.
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Sometime around April of 2026, the Damon Motorcycles website itself went offline, replaced by a generic site not found error page.
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Years after its splashy launch, no confirmed series production hyper sport motorcycles had reached ordinary customers.
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Arc vehicle in the UK built a gorgeous $128 ,000 electric motorcycle called the Vector.
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They delivered exactly 11 of them before entering voluntary liquidation.
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One of those 11 went to Ryan Reynolds.
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fuel, The electric brand founded by motorcycle legend Eric Buell shut down in late 2024 with customers left holding worthless deposits.
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Sondors reportedly had thousands of finished motorcycles abandoned in a Chinese factory when the company evaporated in late 2023.
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So why is this happening?
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Why did electric cars become a genuine mass market product
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while electric motorcycles can barely sell a thousand units a year in the richest country on earth?
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The answer is something the industry has spent years dancing around,
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and it comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding of who buys motorcycles and why.
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Electric cars succeeded because For most people, A car is a tool.
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You need it to get to work, to drop off the kids, to run errands.
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If someone offers you a tool that is quieter, smoother, cheaper to fuel, and accelerates faster, you'll take it.
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The average car buyer is not emotionally attached to their engine note.
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They just want to get from A to B without stopping at a gas station.
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Motorcycle buyers are the opposite.
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In North America and Europe, the vast majority of motorcycle purchases are recreational.
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Most bikes are second or third vehicles in the household.
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These are not commuters looking for efficiency.
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These are enthusiasts who already own a car and chose to spend extra money on a louder,
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more dangerous, less practical vehicle because the experience is the entire point.
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The rumble of the engine, the vibration through the handlebars,
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the bark of the exhaust on a downshift, morning.
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That is not a feature to be upgraded.
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That is the product.
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And electric motorcycles replace almost everything many traditional riders say they love.
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The sensory experience that premium motorcycle buyers pay for gets stripped away when you swap in a battery and a motor.
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Harley Davidson, a company that literally tried to trademark the sound of their V -twin engine,
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built a motorcycle The irony of that would be funny if it had not cost shareholders hundreds of millions of dollars.
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But even if you could convince riders to give up the sound and the feel, the practical problems would still be deal breakers.
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Range on electric motorcycles is brutal compared to gas equivalents.
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A Livewire S2 Alpinista at $12 ,000 gets roughly 80 to 120 miles of realistic mixed riding,
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depending on how aggressive you are with the throttle.
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A comparably priced gas motorcycle covers 200 to 300 miles on a single tank
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and refuels in 3 minutes at any gas station.
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For touring riders, the people who historically spend the most money on premium motorcycles, this gap is disqualifying.
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Charging infrastructure is somehow even worse for motorcycles than for cars.
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Most public fast chargers are designed with car -sized bays and CCS or NACS plugs.
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Many electric motorcycles only support J1772 connections and cannot take advantage of fast charging.
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every available bay.
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There is essentially zero motorcycle specific charging infrastructure anywhere in North America.
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Weight is a real problem.
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Batteries are heavy and while electric bikes do carry that mass low in the frame,
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more than a hundred extra pounds are still harder to hide on a motorcycle than in a two -ton car.
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A Zero SRF weighs about 485 pounds.
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A Livewire 1 tips the scales at around 560 pounds.
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Comparable gas bikes come in significantly lighter.
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For nimble canyon riding or low speed maneuvering, that difference matters.
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Aftermarket options are basically non -existent.
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Gas motorcycles support an enormous ecosystem of customization,
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exhausts, intakes, ECU tunes, fairings, handlebars, seats.
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The entire culture of making a bike yours has no equivalent in the electric car.
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These bikes are sealed appliances.
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You ride them as delivered, or you do not ride them.
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Resale values are terrible and getting worse.
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Multiple electric motorcycle manufacturers have gone bankrupt, leaving existing owners stranded without parts, warranty support, or service.
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J .D.
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Power has refused to even publish used values for certain electric motorcycle brands, because the resale market is too thin to track.
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Meanwhile, the industry PR machine keeps spinning.
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Livewire's annual report leads with the fact
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that they are the number one seller of 50 plus horsepower electric motorcycles in the United States.
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That claim covers a total market smaller than a decent sized biker rally parking lot.
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Their press materials celebrate a 32 % reduction in operating losses.
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The underlying unit growth was 41 motorcycles.
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The honest truth, and this is the thing no sitting executive will say publicly, is that premium electric motorcycles do not have an engineering problem waiting for better batteries.
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They have a product market fit problem.
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The people who buy premium motorcycles in western markets want exactly the things that electric drivetrains either remove or make worse.
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Sound, feel, range, fast refueling, cheap entry prices, modification culture, and community built around mechanical machines.
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Until that gap closes, either through dramatic price drops, completely new battery chemistry, or a fundamental demographic shift in who buys motorcycles,
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the numbers are going to keep telling the same story they told in 2025.
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A rounding error inside an already struggling industry, kept alive by corporate subsidies and marketing language framed around future potential
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because present day sales numbers tell a story nobody wants to read out loud.
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And the companies building these bikes know it.
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They just won't say it out loud.
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If this breakdown surprised you, hit subscribe.
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We cover stories like this every week, digging into the industries and companies that nobody else is being honest about.
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Now check out this next video where we go even deeper on a story the industry does not want you to see.
为何要通过此视频练习口语？
在我们学习英语的过程中，口语表达能力的提高至关重要。这段视频讨论了电动摩托车行业的现状，虽然主题独特，但以清晰的叙述风格和生动的实例，提供了丰富的英语口语练习素材。通过模仿视频中的说话方式，你可以提高你的发音，增强讲话的流利度。在这个过程中，shadowspeak 技术可以帮助你有效地掌握发音和语调，为雅思口语练习打下坚实的基础。
语法与表达在上下文中的应用
这个视频中使用了一些有趣的语法结构和表达方式，有助于提高我们的英语水平：
- 倒装句：例如，"But here is what none of these companies will tell you publicly." 这种语句结构在表达时能增强重点，使话语更加生动。
- 时间状语从句：如 "In 2025, Livewire sold 653 motorcycles worldwide for the entire year." 这个结构帮助我们通过时间线来理解事件。
- 条件句：例如 ”If you watched the press conferences and read the headlines, you might have believed it was actually happening.” 这种结构可以用来表达假设情况，增加语言的丰富性。
这些语法结构在日常对话中也很常见，通过模仿你可以更自信地使用这些表达方式，进而提升你的英语影子跟读能力。
常见发音陷阱
视频中的一些词汇和短语可能会对学习者带来挑战。注意这些词语的发音：
- “motorcycle”：注意重音的放置，通常发音为 /ˈmoʊ.t̬ɚˌsaɪ.kəl/，强调第一音节。
- “collapse”：这个词需要注意音节分开与连读的发音，例如 /kəˈlæps/。
- “revenue”：发音为 /ˈrɛv.ən.juː/，音节中的“ven”需要清晰表达。
对于学习者来说，掌握这些常见的发音陷阱，对于提高口语流利度至关重要。在练习时，可以使用 shadowing site 进行跟读练习，增强发音的准确性。
什么是跟读法？
跟读法 (Shadowing) 是一种有科学依据的语言学习技巧，最初开发用于专业口译员的培训，并由多语言者Alexander Arguelles博士普及。这个方法简单而强大：您在听英语母语原声的同时立即大声重复——就像是一个延迟1-2秒紧跟说话者的影子。与被动听力或语法练习不同，跟读法强迫您的大脑和口腔肌肉同时处理并模仿真实的讲话模式。研究表明它能显着提高发音准确性，语调，节奏，连读，听力理解和口语流利度——使其成为雅思口语备考和真实英语交流最有效的方法之一。