Harley-Davidson expects to start selling an electric motorcycle within five years, according to the Milwaukee Business Journal, which reported last week that the bike is actively under development.

The company first rolled out an electric concept bike in 2014. Called LiveWire, its design was as aggressively muscular as you'd expect from a Harley, and its electric motor was no less prominently displayed than the gas engines of its siblings.

LiveWire went on a road trip to more than 30 Harley dealerships around the US so that its engineers could get feedback from the 6,800 Harley fans who lined up to test drive it. Another tour followed in 2015, with stops in Malaysia, Europe, the US, and Canada.

Harley kept technical details of the bike quiet, other than hailing its design features, gigantic motor, and distinctive sound.

"Think fighter jet on an aircraft carrier," the company's Cheif Marketing Officer Mark-Hans Richer said at the time. "Project LiveWire's unique sound was designed to differentiate it from internal combustion and other electric motorcycles on the market."

The company emphasized that LiveWire was just a prototype, and said it had not made any decisions on whether or not to put it into production. Autoblog doesn't think many of those design cues will make it into the production version, mainly because LiveWire's longitudinally mounted engine takes up a lot of space that could otherwise be occupied by batteries.

As a result, the prototype's range was limited to 50 miles, according to Autoblog, about half as far as many electric cars can go and much less than would likely be needed to excite road trip-loving Harley enthusiasts.

A production electric bike would likely need to situate the batteries at the bottom, where the engine typically goes, and relegate the motor to the back of the bike, Autoblog explained.