At first it was surprising that Harley made an electric.
Then I read that they had added a "bevel" gear to transfer power from their longitudinally mounted electric motor to the drive train, designed to make a loud noise.
I really do not want to read about electric motors right now, but I believe we were taught about basic examples in sophomore physics and the principle of operation for larger models is (I would guess from a quick glance) fairly simple, so basically from what I can recall this design move is completely unnecessary. That motor could have been (probably!) easily mounted transversely without a gear.
Noise takes energy to create, and bevel gears take energy to rotate. Power loss for style -- the American way.