Kwang Yang Motor going full throttle with Harley-Davidson SPAC in 2022

• Published date: 17 February 2022
• Publication title: The China Post

Taiwan has an estimated 14-million-plus registered scooters, meaning that almost every household owns one or two motorcycles.

Thanks to this love of two-wheelers, unique tech advantages, and leadership in manufacturing, Taiwan motorcycle brands are well-positioned to become global leaders in the electric motorcycle industry.

At the beginning of last year, Kwang Yang Motor received an invitation from Harley-Davidson's chairman to become the strategic partner of LiveWire and go public through a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

According to Kwang Yang Motor CoChairman Allen Ko'the key is how can KYMCO contribute with what Harley-Davidson has, and help LiveWire at the same time; how can this partnership help KYMCO?' 'The IONEX is more for urban compact scooters, it's for the mass market, LiveWire has been developing high-powered motorcycles, which is the area where KYMCO has been trying to get into,' he continued. 'We have launched two concept vehicles: One is the REVONEX, one is the SUPERNEX.'

'We can make use of each other's strengths. For us, we are very good at manufacturing, quality manufacturing and maybe compared to the manufacturing bases in the U.S., we are less expensive,' he continued.

'LiveWire has more advanced technology in terms of the high power motorcycle because they already have one that is running in the market for like four or five years and that is a tremendous experience you can get from the customer feedback from the market feedback,' he stressed.

'That is really going to be helpful when we go overseas,' he said, hitting at several partnerships with industry leaders such as Harley-Davidson. Ko visited the headquarters of the iconic motorcycle manufacturer a few years ago to learn from the more advanced LiveWire electric motorcycle.

'We launched the first generation of IONEX scooters in 2018, even though we actually started their development several years before that,' Kwang Yang Motor Co.) Chairman Allen Ko told The China Post. The Taiwan company sells motorcycles and scooters under the KYMCO brand.

'The key is that we had to learn what the market really wants,' he added. 'So by launching the first generation IONEX, we quickly realized that what people really want in the electric era was not just a means of transportation, it's a different kind of mindset.'

The statement sounds like a very rewarding and humbling experience learned by a company that has had a long history of making gas-fueled scooters. Kwang Yang has...