#MarcoMelandri

Another thing the interwebs have diluted a tad is SoCal’s local International Motorcycle Show, the one that kicks off new-motorcycle fever in Long Beach, California, every November. Now that we get to see nearly all the new bikes the week before from Milano, it’s slightly anticlimactic. Only slightly, though. It’s still a great place to see everybody in the U.S. bike industry all in one place and gauge their confidence/fear ratio, along with most, if not all, of the new machinery, and to ask each other collectively, ‘How we doin’?’

The electric motorcycle race is marching on at a rapid pace, and the 2013 Zero S is the latest example of how far the performance gap to gas bikes is closing. Last year, the Zero S/DS duo was the first legitimate entries we could even remotely compare to a gas counterpart in terms of performance. For 2013, however, there’s no question a Zero’s performance is on par with 250cc gas bikes, and perhaps even better.