2016 Zero SR13.0 review

When people first spot me on the Zero SR13.0, they ask the same questions: how many kilometres to a charge do you get?; why does it look so plain?; do motorists not know you are there ‘cos they can’t hear you…etc.

I answer them all the same: “It does 0-100km/h in less than 3.5 seconds.”

I answer that way because the Zero SR13.0 is the closest to being a regular bike an electric bike has ever been, and while there are certainly some downsides remaining when it comes to electric-powered motorcycles – the battery is massive and very expensive, range is indeed limited in conventional terms and you can barely hear the bloody thing – this bike makes a true electric future feel very close. For urban commuters, it’s ready to go - now.

If you want to smash out a morning session up the Putty Road, Mt Glorious or the Adelaide Hills, and be back for lunch, this bike isn’t for you.

I managed to drain the battery in 90-odd kilometres with a jovial right hand and in full power Sport mode, meaning, unless you have a fast charger or extra battery power on board, it’s 8.9 hours of charging before the Z-Force Li-Ion intelligent battery pack is ready for a hard charging 90km again.

However, if you treat this bike like a smart phone and have the discipline and ability to charge it most times you stop – at work, in the garage, at a friendly coffee shop – it will just keep going.

There are longer range options already, the first being the Z-Force Power Tank ($4790), which sits where the current tank bag arrangement fits, and delivers 60km more range, or thereabouts.

The Charge Tank ($3990 fitted) will allow charging in half the time, but because it also sits where the Power Tank does you can choose either, but not both. The Charge Tank does require an electric car-spec charging plug, as the household powerpoint that charges the regular battery can’t get enough spark into the fast-charge option.

None of this is totally ideal yet, and Zero knows it. As you read this, numerous beaker-headed nerds are developing battery-power incredibly quickly, and once that clever crowd has worked out a way of making that immense battery longer lasting, smaller, lighter and cheaper, then Zero will be ahead of the game.

Zero will be ahead, because the bike itself is already pretty good and many of the cool features will be even more effective.

Those features include brakes that help put a little bit back into the battery system every time you use them. They are Bosch anti-lock braking equipped stoppers, though just one disc at each end. Two up the front would mean extra weight, an enemy of range.

You can infiltrate the power modes with your smart phone, adding power where you want it to make a custom mode, check battery info, work out how much money you saved riding it rather than an old-fashioned gas guzzler and contact online support. A nerd’s wet dream.

There are numerous features, although not as many as you’d expect from something so otherwise high tech and with such a large sticker price.

When this incarnation first appeared, I was hoping for something that put a Panigale to shame with more software than an Apple Store. Gyro-equipped traction control? Nope. Corner-sensing anti-lock braking? Nope? A wheelie button? Nope.

On that note, traction control would be handy on this bike, because if she spins up there’s no clutch to disconnect drive as you would on a conventional bike. Instead, all you can do is power out, or shut the throttle and hope it hooks up again smoothly.

That said, the Pirelli Diablo Rosso IIs attached to this bike are soft and grippy, though the bike feels a little peculiar when cornering. At low speed it feels doughy up front, but this lightens up as the speed comes up. In higher speed corners it is solid enough, but its small size and unusual balance makes it feel less solid mid-corner than I’d like.

As mentioned at the start, it fair hammers in a straight line, and the feeling of near-silently grinning your way at the horizon is an addictive past time. This was much of the reason I drained the battery so quickly, so regularly.

Switching modes on the fly to “Eco” takes most of the fun away, and it’s not far off riding a 50cc scooter. Yeah, the range will increase, but the novelty factor is reduced and I prefer more power when dealing with traffic, than what that mode delivers.

This is where the custom option comes in. You can tune a mode to give you good grunt off the line, and then chew less power when sitting on the highway. The bike will do 120km/h comfortably on the freeway, which is a weird feeling when there’s close to zero engine noise signifying anything is happening.

This silence is the biggest thing to get used to, but there’s more weirdness.

There’s fresh air in front of your clutch hand and left foot – no gears, no clutch lever. This means the bike is scooter-spec to ride, though few scooters will keep up with it.

The only way to keep the bike where you left it is to apply a quaint, yellow piece of plastic to the front brake lever. The yellow thing sits in the tank bag, along with the cord that plugs into the regular household plug for charging, and is a poor effort for the price of the bike.

That price is $26,490 plus on-road costs, about what you pay for a BMW R 1200 GS with all the fruit…

The majority of that price is in the battery, all $16-odd K of it! This fact is why Zero and other electric vehicle companies are looking at battery swap stations – similar to how gas bottles work – to drop the price of the bike. There are other options, such as buying the bike and leasing the battery, improved battery tech and it is all happening at a frightening rate.

As an urban mauler, though, this bike is an inner-city greenie’s delight. Being able to drag an extension cord from that cavernous tank bag and plug into the wall next to the coffee machine, is something their world is made of. As easy as it is to dismiss this, however, the bike works in that way.

It is light and nimble, weighing in at 188kg (claimed) ready to ride, and small, so filtering through traffic jams is easy. Just be aware drivers and pedestrians can’t hear you coming…

It also needs next to no servicing. The battery is under warranty for five years or 160,000km – that’s a lot of 8km inner city commutes – there’s no oil to change and as long as the wheel bearings stay pucker and the rest of the bike free of damage or corrosion, it’s a simple thing to keep it in top nick.

It’s also a simple thing to embarrass regular bike riders from the lights. The Zero needs no balancing of the clutch or delicate throttle inputs to get away quick smart – it just buggers off in a cloud of silence. That’s not quite true, the electric engine motor does whine – you can hear it in the accompanying video – but it does mean you can hear the sound of the your petrol-engined foe getting hard on the gas to make up for the jump you have inevitably drawn on them from the lights.

It punches from standstill and out of corners bloody hard, much harder than I expected, and it’s because the Z-Force 75-7R brushless motor is a torque-monster – a claimed 144Nm.

The things I like most about this bike are the acceleration, the underdog status, the uniqueness, the need to think very differently about this two-wheeler compared to anything else I have ridden over the years and the fact it makes riding it fun.

I don’t like the “handbrake”, the light-duty feel to the suspension, the noisy brakes and the price tag.

For those looking for something different and who aren’t necessarily married to the concept of petrol-burning bikes and who want to buy into the zero-emission nature of this bike, then they now have something ready to go.

There are certainly some corners to cover in future models, and at the rate the Zero has improved I don’t doubt they will be there in the near future. Sorting out the price of that battery would let them add more features to what is otherwise a plain machine.

But if silently slipping between the traffic, boycotting servos and owning something that won’t be killed by stop/start traffic, the Zero is ready to roll, now. It’s not perfect, but it is fun and it is the closest to regular motorcycling electric bikes have been.