#ElectricMotorcycles

If you feel like you’ve seen the 2022 Zero FXE somewhere before, there’s a good chance that you have – or at least something similar. In 2019, Zero teamed up with industrial design firm, Huge Design to create the Zero SM concept for the Portland-based One Moto Show. While Huge Design is mostly known for consumer product design, they had been collaborating with Zero at the component level for some time prior. 

Harley-Davidson says it intends to be the world leader in the electrification of motorcycles, is excited about the future of electric motorcycles, and expects to deliver a full portfolio of electric motorcycles by 2022. Four years after the prototype, project LiveWire is production-ready and on display at EICMA; pre-orders can be placed beginning in January. H-D’s press release promised further details, but apart from the bike’s charging capabilities (Level 2 or Level 3, DC Fast Charge (DCFC), through a SAE J1772 connector, (USA), or CCS2 – IEC type 2 charging connector in international markets), there’s not a great deal we didn’t already know. Important details including range and weight remain mysteries. We like it anyway!

Love them or loathe them, electric vehicles are here to stay. Electric cars are already highly practical: Tesla’s Model S can go over 300 miles on a charge, and even the subcompact Chevy Bolt EV hatchback is supposedly able to go 238 miles. But those are cars, and the Tesla’s battery weighs 1200 pounds, the Bolt’s 960. Not so practical for a motorcycle, where the whole vehicle needs to weigh about half that.

Riding the Zero DSR quickly turned me into a child. Laughing hysterically as I sneaked through traffic and by unsuspecting pedestrians, getting a kick out of the shocked faces on these innocent bystanders was one of the first reasons I enjoyed the Zero DSR, the second involved the R part of its model designation. I came for the ninja-like stealth, but stayed for the claimed 116 lb-ft of torque. Any time there was dirt in sight, a patch of gravel, an unbordered planter in a parking lot, I would bee-line for it, lighting up that rear tire quicker than the aforementioned innocent bystander could shield themselves from the dust. I’d like to say I’m sorry to the man in that car at the Rose Bowl parking lot who endured a large cloud of dust blowing into his open car windows.

Updated August 2020

Zero Motorcycles turns 10 years old in 2016, and anyone who has followed the company’s progress, even from the periphery, can’t deny the progress Zero has made in advancing electric motorcycles. Giving his take on the electric motorcycle movement, and the role Zero Motorcycles has played in it, is company CTO Abe Askenazi. In his statement below, Abe argues the benefits of electric propulsion (though range and charge times are curiously absent from his statment). Clearly he has a stake in the electric game, but for those unfamiliar with Askenazi you should know that he spent a significant portion of his career in a similar role working alongside Erik Buell at Buell Motorcycles. A company, if you’ll remember, whose name was built on building a sportbike out of the unmistakable, gasoline-burning Harley-Davidson V-Twin. -TS

Ireland is not a location you think of when it comes to motorcycle companies. Sure, the country has a great heritage in motorcycling, especially when it comes to racing on real roads, but as a locale for a company actually selling motorcycles? Not so much. It’s not a big stretch, then, to imagine an unconventional place to be the home of an unconventional vehicle, and with a name like Volt Motorcycles, you can likely guess what kind of unconventional vehicle Volt produces.

Maturity. For me, I look back at the point I became a mature human as the time in my life when my voice deepened, I was hungry all the time, and I was incredibly awkward talking to girls (some things never change). I’m guessing it was an awkward time for many of us, but the term “maturity” is also one I hear a lot when it comes to electric vehicles. As I noted in my long(ish)-term review of the Zero SR, my wife and I had contemplated an electric car for our daily transportation.

More than 50 city, county and municipal police departments now use police-spec electric motorcycles on the job, many of them as part of their traffic divisions – you know, those motorcycle cops who light you up and pull you over to write you a citation for something that you’re absolutely positive you didn’t do. “80 in a 25??? But officer, this old thing won’t even go 80 mph… ”

“The e-bike continues to evolve.” That was the subhead used by former MO staffer, Jeff Cobb, when describing the 2010 Zero S and DS. Having just ridden the 2015 Zero model line, and claiming the electric motorcycle has finally arrived, for this week’s Church feature we revisit Cobb’s review of the then-new 2010 Zero S and DS. A lot has changed in the moto landscape since 2010, and Zero’s transformation in the last five years has been extensive. In 2010, range and power were major issues (not to mention the odd styling). Compare that to today and each measure of the bike’s performance has increased several times over. Continue that trend into the next five to 10 years, and the future of electric propulsion is destined to make major leaps and bounds. For now, however, let’s look back at 2010, and the Ford Model T of Zeros – the S and DS. Also, be sure to check out the three-page photo gallery for more pictures.

American motorcyclists have a drinking problem. We drink too much Haterade and not enough Kool-Aid.

With all the hoopla surrounding the Harley-Davidson LiveWire, this Church of MO feature would like to remind everyone about Motorcycle.com‘s long-standing involvement with electric vehicles. Sure this includes the early days of both Zero and Brammo, but our relationship with e-bikes stems even further back: To 1998, and an obscure machine called the EMB Lectra. About the size of a modern day Honda Grom, the Lectra is entirely outdated when compared to modern electric motorcycles. However, in the course of 16 years, electric motorcycles like the Lectra have matured from being considered toys, to becoming embraced by none other than Harley-Davidson. Read on to see just how far we’ve come.

It’s always interesting to see how cutting-edge technology is incorporated into new motorcycles. Having written about bikes for the better part of two decades, I’ve seen the introduction of aluminum frames, inverted forks, electronic fuel injection, antilock brakes, a proliferation of exotic materials (titanium, magnesium, carbon fiber) and, more recently, semi-active suspensions and traction controls.