Kymco To Make LiveWire S3

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Kymco has filed patents related to its upcoming LiveWire S3, which it will manufacture in partnership with Harley-Davidson’s LiveWire. (Kymco/)

Back in December 2021 Harley-Davidson spun off LiveWire as a separate company and announced its plans for the modular Arrow electric motorcycle platform that would form the basis of the S2 Del Mar and the newly launched S2 Mulholland. At the same time the company revealed that Taiwan’s Kymco would partner on a scaled-down S3 version of the Arrow platform. Recently a patent has emerged from Kymco showing a bike based on the LiveWire components.

Kymco isn’t just helping out. The Taiwanese company put $100 million into LiveWire, with a matching contribution from Harley-Davidson, when the company was turned into a separate entity. While Harley still owns the lion’s share of LiveWire, Kymco took a 4 percent stake, and its own planned electric motorcycles—the delayed RevoNEX and SuperNEX that were first shown back in 2018 before being reworked as 2022 concepts—are likely to borrow substantially from the joint development of the smaller LiveWire S3 models.

The Arrow chassis platform is the basis for the S2 Del Mar and S2 Mulholland LiveWire models. (LiveWire/)

The Arrow platform that underpins the current LiveWire S2 bikes is designed to be adaptable. In keeping with the latest EV motorcycle trends, it uses an aluminum battery case as its main frame structure, with removable front and rear subframes that allow the same center section to be used in multiple styles of bike. LiveWire also says the Arrow platform can be used with various different motors and batteries, either air-cooled or liquid-cooled, to cover a broad range of performance and price points.

The patent filed relates to the location of the ECU on the upcoming LiveWire S3. (Kymco/)

While we’ve yet to see the first LiveWire S3 model, the product portfolio released when LiveWire was set up as a separate entity in 2021 showed they’re going to be made in partnership with Kymco, “scaling down the Arrow architecture to a platform of lightweight 2-wheelers.”

Kymco’s RevoNex concept bike. (Kymco/)

The new Kymco patent shows an Arrow-style chassis, motor, and swingarm, all under the silhouette of the original RevoNEX concept bike from 2018. That’s likely to be a red herring—the original RevoNEX had a completely different, conventional chassis, and was superseded by a second concept in 2022 that changed not only its style but also its mechanical layout. The new Kymco patent relates very specifically to details of the positioning of an IMU in the bike’s chassis, suggesting that the Arrow platform seen in the images is truly representative of the under-skin layout of a future Kymco/LiveWire model.

The LiveWire S2 Mulholland uses the Arrow platform. (LiveWire/)

Notable changes include a completely different seat subframe (one of the modular elements of the Arrow platform) that’s unlike either the existing LiveWire S2 Del Mar or S2 Mulholland’s designs. Since this is where the IMU that the patent relates to is mounted, it’s likely the drawings are accurate, showing the underpinnings of an as-yet-unlaunched, Arrow-based Kymco model.

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