ZERO Motorcycles for 2011

Looks like a little Husky styling influence.......nice

http://www.zeromotorcycles.com/zero-mx/order.php

50#/ft torque, 170#'s weight (do the math !), it matches my gear, i gotta have it! and, i'd pull the trigger this minute if i could make it more than 20 mins from the truck before i gotta turn back. ack! what a tease. if they can guarantee me 2 hours of full gas and it wont croak due to dust and water, i'll buy one NOW.

the future: instead of gas cans all over the pits there's gonna be r/v hook-up's and extention cords everywhere! it'll be quiet too. might mean more tracks and places to ride, i can dig it!

I rode the sumo version at the AMA event at Infineon last year. It was an interesting ride. Very quiet, eerily so, with just that electric whine when it gets going. The power was electronically limited just off "idle" so there wasn't the rush you'd expect with those torque numbers, but I'm sure that's easily overcome with a bit of laptop time.

I am thinking it needs at least an avertised time of 6-8 hrs before I would consider it. Hot days or hard technical uphill trails would cut that duration time in half easily.

I'm so old school, That I wouldn't be interested unless they added a sound system recording of a two stroke, and a smoke machine that put out 2t smelly smoke.
I can see the new tech desert rider, His electric dirt bike, running around silently for a couple hours a day, and running their 5000 watt generators all night to charge them.
Then of course those that run conventional bikes will be looked down on for not being green enough

It's a novel concept, but right now I think it's best for kids toy bikes, Maybe a class of electric motocross machines. One thing race promoters seem to miss now,
is the added thrill the spectator's get from the sound of a highly tuned loud dirt bike, to some its music. I can't imagine watching an Enduro cross
and its totally silent, all you hear is the whirr of the tires running across the dirt, then someone will try and silence that.

In the old days, dirt bikes didn't run mufflers, and the sound of an expansion chamber without a muffler was considered sweet.
The sound of a stripped down Honda 305 with straight pipes, nice. But those days are gone, It's not all bad
riding in the mountains in majestic settings, and having a silent bike is great. But I still miss the open desert, open pipe feel and sounds.
Mike

Dear Robertaccio,

As a point oif clarification those aren't 2011 Zeroes. The announcement and photos go out next week. We will offer a full range of motorcycles with dramtically new styling and performance platforms. Nothing has been influenced by Husqvarna I can assure you of that. Our business is being built on the transportation, commuting and fun recreation sector. We are signing global distributors at the rate of two/mo and our dealer network asa whole is growing rapidly as well. Our greatest opportunity is coming from fleet sales and govt agencies with a huge number of requests coming from police depts around the world. Our strategies are well developed and sound. We are driven to be the leaders in developing this new technology, create U.S. based manufacturing jobs, lowering our dependence on foreign oil and attract all new customers to our sport. I am very happy to say that we are becoming very successful on all fronts. The focus is not on replacing the current use model for off road motorcycles. That market is is being served very well by the tradional ICE OEMs. That market is also the smallest of all motorcylcle markets. We are focused on a much bigger picture and are hoping to secure our brand as the global leader in driving this new technology to the marketplace. It is a huge challenge but very exciting. If we are successful we will be responsible for a truly transformational change in the development of two wheeled transportaion and recreation and it will come from an AMERICAN company.

There are a lot of misconceptions out there about what electric motorcycles can and cannot do. I just wanted to clear some of this up. In regards to off road use our product is intended as a supplement for your traditional ICE riding experience. We offer an opportunity for quick afterwork and weekend rides in the back yard or the vacant lot across the street. Because we make no sound we are not an issue for 90% of those that oppose what we do. I can tell you from personal experience that riding an electric bike in these conditions is just as much fun as my regular bike. In any case, thanks for thinking about us. This is the first time I've checked in at CafeHusky since I left 6 months ago. Hope everyone is doing well in Husqvarna land.

Husky Relic, Thank you for checking in Great news from The Zero World!! Thank you for widening the focus of what Zero is all about. I was so locked on to the dirtbike thing...... its a big world of transport out there. RN

Not written because of me, but would like to comment. I'm glad you cleared up the purpose for the electric bike. There are some impressions people have
out there, that believe the e bike would try and replace the traditional bike, I don't believe the impressions are coming from the ebike manufactures,
but more a green element of our society. Ebike manufactures may be trying to appease that thinking. Hopefully the ebike company's don't get wrapped up in that way of thinking.
Its all about treading, not sound. Sound and pollution is an excuse for some groups to close down public land to dirt bikes, e bikes would be a way to sneak past that mentality,
but The main reason the greens want to shut it down is like I said, treading.

Some groups are actively making bikes louder, street Harley riders, for one. They profess that being seen, by being louder is the way to go. But there is a place for ebikes,
And the market will determine that place. Dirt bike mags, like dirt rider, dirt bike, believe that silence is the cure for our problems of land closer.
(they even take points off a bike in their shoot outs for being louder than other bikes). They are fooling their selves.

Even if the ebike was as good as traditional bikes in all areas, I believe it still will be a novel concept. Like I said, jokingly, above about races, and how the roar of the bikes add
to the thrill of the race, an all electric bike race would be boring, well as long as they still sell beer, it would be just ok.

Hopefully the ebike industry doesn't jump in bed with the very people that want land closed to everyone except hikers, Sadly I think thats just what started the concept
of ebikes. You can't get much greener than a mountain bike, yet many trails are closed to them too. Here in calif, many fine trails are closed to the traditional dirt bike, yet
street legal dirt bikes can use them, this is causing barley street legal duel purpose bikes to be made to bypass the laws. Smart move, because if its open to street legal
cars, then you can't outlaw the bikes. But an ebike is cool and I'm ok with them, until I come across a sign out in the desert that says, ebikes only, then I will be against
the ebike industry. I'm afraid that the ebike industry would be perfectly happy with that arrangement. If the ebike industry were willing to stand side by side with the other
off road users, that would be different, but the ads, and press the ebikes are putting out about the ebikes, looks to me like they are some kind of environmentally more sound choice
for everyone. That smacks of elitist, and maybe not married to the greens, but sure are having an affair with them.

Speaking out against a part of a motorcycle industry, rubs me wrong, but if push came to shove, I believe the ebike industry would join ranks with massive land closer's
as long as they were excluded, I think the industry doesn't care about 99 percent of the traditional users, and would sell them down the river for their one percent market share.
The industry was started to please the green crowd in the first place, I think. Ohh and make money.

By the way This is what promted me to write above what I did "lowering our dependence on foreign oil and attract all new customers to our sport."

Mike

Oh well I guess we are back to putting playing cards in our spokes
Mike

My ICE riding experience looked like this....

I did ride one of these a couple years ago. Just in the parking lot. It didn't really feel anything like an ICE dirt bike; more like a heavy mountain bike. It would be a fun 2nd, 3rd, or 4th bike.

You guys know that ICE is EV-speak for Internal Combustion Engine, right?

Yep sort of what I was saying, its seems all PC, doesn't seem to be any room for light hardiness. Like us dirt bike riders call 2t, 2 smokers, and 4t thumpers.
great little nick names. But in the ev world, it seems so cold. Like the military or something. There's PC correct names for almost everything.

But I think the ebike community will realize (through marketing) that most everyone that will buy the ebike, already rides some kind of bike. The amount of
new people that don't ride bikes, isn't because the bikes are ice, It's because they never had any desire to ride in the first place. An ebike isn't going to change that.

If you look at marketing from the past, probably the best campaign to get new riders was from Honda, a very positive upbeat, appeal to a younger generation back then.
"You meet the nicest people on a Honda". Everyone wants to be nice and it looked so fun.

Ebike's seem to be going after the greener crowd more, an exclusive bunch, that are associated with some very nasty ways to get their point across, (spiking trees,
tossing toxic chemicals on whaling ships, spiking trails, disrupting legal hunting activity's,) when Honda came out with the Honda 50 trail bike, they didn't want anything to do
with outlaw bikers. They just wanted to promote fun. The ebike makers are getting big time tax breaks, and even get some subsidy's from states like calif.
guilt, and being pc, are not very good ways to attract lots of sales.

Saving oil, pollution, soundless, I mean come on, the average dirt bike rider, what, goes riding once every two months or so, they burn maybe 3-4 gallons of gas
each time, if that. I like the ebike idea for some things, but I think the industry would be better off with a non confronted approach, Like you meet the nicest people on an ebike,
as opposed to, ebike riders are more responsible, environmentally better people, although they don't come right out and say that, it's surely implied.

Now an ebike that runs 3-4 hours hard, charges its battery with a solar panel while you have lunch, then go ride a couple more hours Is a good idea, but for now
you go ride a couple hours, run your polluting ice generator for a couple hours to charge it, then go ride again, well we are just not there yet as far as being
a superior form of outdoor fun. 7 to 10 thousand dollars, I would be buying a brand new fire breathing Husky instead.

But you meet the nicest people on the CAFE HUSKY WEB SITE
Mike

I think the point is as stated from Husky Relic it's from a way larger perspective not just our very small "US dirtbike" crowd/world, its coming from a full on assault on basic transport. For example check any stop light in Madrid(for example)......a silly guess would place 25 powered bikes sitting there, that would be the real market not for play toys (dirtbikes). I think we all focus on the toy market (most of our bikes are basically toys), the real future is in the everyday transport market both commercial and private sector as focused from companies like ZERO.

(I adjusted/edited to get the message meaning more clear)

I would really like to try one of these out for going back and forth to work. I think this is huge in that regard.