Aug

Two Wheels, Zero Emissions and Loads of Fun

Posted by admin Published in Two Wheels

The Zero X is everything you want in a motocross motorcycle. It’s light, it’s nimble and it’s lightning-quick. The fact it’s 100 percent electric is just icing on the cake.

The most amazing thing about the Zero X from Zero Motorcycles, aside from the fact it’s an EV you can actually buy right now for $7,450, is its weight - a bantamweight 140 pounds with the lithium-ion battery. Coupled with a 23-horsepower motor that provides instantaneous torque, the Zero X will hit 57 mph and leave a fat streak of rubber on the pavement doing it.

As good as the Zero X is, the street version coming next year promises to be even better.

Neil Saiki started developing the Zero X five years ago after participating in a NASA round table analyzing transportation technology. He became convinced electric drivetrains are the best way forward and motorcycles the logical place to develop them. They’re smaller and less complex than cars, and the regulatory hurdles to getting them on the road aren’t as high. Besides - he loves to ride. “That’s the real reason I did it,” the former aerospace engineer told us with a laugh. “I wanted to invent a product that’s crazy fast and fun to ride.”

Mission accomplished.

The Zero X is a blast. capability comes on instantaneously, and it’ll catch you off guard considering the bike is all but silent. Snap the throttle too tough and you’ll lift the front wheel. “The throttle is like a light switch,” Saiki says. “It’s on or it’s off.”

A two-mode switch on the aluminum frame keeps the learning curve gentle. A low-speed mode limits the bike to about 30 mph and is good for tooling around. Switch to high-speed mode and you get unfettered acceleration to about 57 mph. The Zero X will hit 30 mph in under two seconds and 57 in about twice that. The company claims the Zero X offers performance similar to a 250cc motocrosser. Juice comes from a proprietary li-ion battery that weighs 40 pounds and provides about two hours of riding duration. It recharges in about two hours using any household

socket, and you can get a spare for $2,950.

The Zero X has hydraulic disc brakes and fully adjustable suspension with about 8 inches of travel. It’s comfortable to ride and so easy to toss around it feels more like a mountain bike than a motorcycle. That’s not a coincidence - Saiki has designed mountain bikes for the likes of Santa Cruz, Haro and Mountain Cycles.

That’s not to say the Zero X is a bicycle fitted with a motor or a motocrosser stripped of its engine. Saiki worked through seven prototypes and designed most of the 300 or so components himself. The bikes are built in a factory approach Santa Cruz, and Saiki hopes to turn out 300 a month by next summer. He’s sold 127 since April (Google’s Larry Page bought three) and has a waiting list of 77 folks, including two guys who signed up after seeing the bike external our office.

Saiki says about 75 percent of buyers are seasoned motorcross riders, which speaks to the bike’s dirt cred. Saiki had motocross hall-of-famer Jeff Emig flog a prototype at a track in Las Vegas final year, and Emig says it’s the real deal. “I’m expecting the production version to have a huge affect on the motorsports industry,” he says.

That’s not to say we’ll see James Stewart or Ryan Villopoto racing them anytime soon (although Saiki says the AMA is interested in racing e-bikes). But even the guys at Dirt Rider (.pdf) were impressed suitable to shout an early prototype of the Zero X “the inevitable sound of the future of off-road motorcycle riding.”

As for Zero Motorcycle’s future, it includes a street version good for 70 mph and a range of 60 miles. Look for it in January with a sticker price of $9,000.

Photos by Emily Lang / wired.com