The buzz has been building for a couple of weeks: Supposedly, Charley Boorman and Ewan McGregor are riding Harley-Davidson LiveWire electric motorcycles for the new Long Way Up television series. Now, new Instagram posts have removed pretty much any doubt in the matter.

At first, photos appeared showing a shipment of interesting vehicles, including two Harley-Davidson LiveWires and two Rivian electric pickups, being delivered to Buenos Aires, at the same time Ewan and Charley showed up. Interesting, and highly suggestive, but not 100 per cent positive.

Now, though, we’ve got a couple more photos showing up on Instagram which appear to show Ewan with an adventure-kitted LiveWire (handlebar muffs, Wolfman luggage, windshield, wire wheels, knobbies). These snaps were supposedly shot around the Ushaia area, which would make sense with the general route Long Way Up is supposed to be taking.

Pretty hard to hide from a camera these days. Photo: Instagram

If Ewan and Charley really are tackling their trip through the Americas by EV, it’s going to be very interesting to see how their results are viewed. While there’s been lots of good press for the LiveWire electric bike, nobody’s really done any high-profile trips with it; nobody’s ridden coast-to-coast, that we know of, or anything like that. It suffers from limited range, like all factory electric bikes (there have been some highly modified projects that have lessened the problem, at great expense).

The LiveWire will recharge quickly at a Level 3 station, but those are going to be non-existent in most of the areas this trip heads through, which almost certainly means the team will recharge off generators. That in turn will leave viewers wondering just how earth-friendly an EV really is, if it requires its own gas-guzzling support vehicle to stay recharged?

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