My guess is that Zero is not designing their motorcycles for EV enthusiasts and "early adopters", but for the "man on the street". That is where future sales are. EV enthusiasts will buy the bikes just because they don't run on gasoline. But there are a limited number of those people. What Zero wants to do is to attract customers who just want a practical motorcycle that doesn't need gasoline, is easy to maintain and ride. How they decide to do that might not make sense to most of the people that frequent this forum. It will be interesting to see what direction they go in with the 2016 models.



It seems to me that the logic being used here and by many others is that EV motorcycles will only sell in volume when they can match the range and refuel time of an ICE motorcycle (or the price comes down enough to justify the reduced range). Therefore, Zero should focus all resources towards making a bike that can go further on a charge and recharge faster.While I agree that range and recharge time are important....like....REALLY important....Zero isn't big enough to be the source of major innovation in battery technology...they are really just along for the ride trying to incorporate the best technology available for the times.In my opinion Zero MUST focus on the "bells and whistles". If the interior of a Tesla Model S looked like a car built in the 80's with analog instrument clusters and basically looked like a nice conversion and didn't have a sleek modern interior, with a large 17in display etc....do you think they would have had even a fraction of the sales??The question Zero should be asking....at the same price point which will more consumers chooseA BMW or Harley or Yamaha or ?? EV motorcycle with all the bells and whistles you would expect from a top shelf motorcycle that goes 100 highway miles on a chargeOr a Zero SR that is unchanged from 2015 except it goes 130 highway miles on a charge instead of the current 90 highway miles.At the current price of batteries...you can add a lot of "bells and whistles" for the same price as a 30% bigger battery.Of course, they don't have to choose between the two....they can continue to offer each model with various sized batteries and they can continue to make a bare bones electric motorcycle for those that want it while still offering a "fully loaded" model for those willing to pay more for the extras.Personally, my dream bike would be an MV Agusta Turismo Veloce Lusso with an electric drive train.