Report Suggests Sales of Luxury, Ultra-Luxury Motorcycles to Increase

A report focusing on the use of adaptive cruise control on motorcycles has suggested that sales of luxury and ultra-luxury motorcycles will increase 9 percent over the next four years.

Adaptive cruise control – sometimes called radar cruise control or traffic-aware cruise control – automatically adjusts a vehicle’s speed to ensure a safe distance from the vehicles ahead. It is a feature that’s become relatively common in cars but in motorcycles tends to only be used in high-end models.

To be honest, we were surprised to learn that any motorcycles are equipped with adaptive cruise control. But according to the report by research and advisory group Technavio, the motorcycle adaptive cruise control market in the Americas produced 830,000 units in 2015 and is expected to produce 1.3 million units by 2020.

The United States is expected to be the largest market for such expensive machines. Some 65 percent of motorcycles sold in the country fall into the luxury or ultra-luxury categories.

The report suggests this is in some part due to the vast North American landscape. Many motorcycle enthusiasts in the Americas view long-distance as inherent to the motorcycle experience. While older riding enthusiasts perceive motorcycling as a means to seek adventure. Americans over 50 years of age control 77 percent of total net worth in the United States. and represent a huge market for ultra-luxury and luxury motorcycle OEMs like Harley-Davidson.

However, the bulk of luxury and ultra-luxury manufacturers are based in Europe, e.g., BMW, Triumph, and Ducati. The motorcycle adaptive cruise control market in Europe produced 360,000 units in 2015 and should produce 540,000 units by 2020, according to the report. It is unclear whether the report takes into account the uncertainty sparked by the recent Brexit vote.

Up until the vote, at least, the United Kingdom was becoming a major hub for the motorcycle market in Europe, followed by France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. In 2015, the United Kingdom witnessed growth of 16 percent in the motorcycle segment.

“The ultra-luxury and luxury motorcycle segments accounted for 30 percent of total motorcycles market in Europe, the second after the Americas,” said Siddharth Jaiswal, a research analyst from Technavio.