“Kickstand is now up,” one of the 20 or so engineers and designers calls out in the design studio. “OK,” a few respond in near unison. Half of them are holding their phones in the air, pointed at the half-finished motorcycle that’s standing on a lift table like an equestrian statue on a pedestal. Another engineer flips the red switch on the handlebars, then moves his hand onto the throttle and twists. Just a touch at first, then properly. With a whine, the rear wheel, suspended in the air, transforms into a blur of black rubber. The room whoops and claps. It’s September 2017, and the men and women of Zero Motorcycles have spent a year and a half getting to this point, to finally see their all-new, fully electric bike work its motor and battery.

After another year and a half of work, the SR/F, Zero’s first significantly new offering in years, is making its debut—and just in time. Zero has led the nascent electric motorcycle market over the past decade, but now bigger players are moving into its territory. Harley-Davidson is taking preorders for its battery-powered LiveWire. Ducati’s CEO says “the future is electric.” Kawasaki has patents that indicate a similar worldview.

Zero is the Tesla of the motorcycle world: It’s smaller and younger than the established manufacturers, but with more relevant experience. “We’re a very old electric vehicle company,” says CEO Sam Paschel. “This [new] generation allows us to create a gap again.”

Rather than trying to disguise the SR/F as a conventional motorcycle, Zero's design team left the 14.4-kWh battery exposed, emphasizing the bike's electric nature. Zero Motorcycles

Based on the specs, that gap could be sizable. Beyond the range—110 miles—Harley hasn't released final specs for the LiveWire yet, but the last numbers it released, for a 2014 prototype of the bike, cited 74 horsepower and 54 pound-feet of torque. Zero’s SR/F wallops that, with 110 horsepower, 140 pound-feet of torque, a 120 mph top speed, and 161 miles of range. A Harley rep says the production LiveWire will have a new motor and battery, though, so don't expect those early numbers to stay where they are. The Harley will be about $10,000 more expensive than the SR/F, which starts at $18,995.

Zero, whose 200 employees are all based in woodsy Scotts Valley, just inland of Santa Cruz, California, started official work on the SR/F three years ago. According to engineer Matt Bentley, though, the team has been thinking about it for closer to five, stockpiling ideas for improvements they couldn’t fit into the company's existing line of bikes. This entirely new model gave Zero the chance to put everything they’d thought of to use, or at least to try it out.