According to Visordown, Kawasaki is working on an electric motorcycle project behind the scenes.
Many industry watchers are predicting the future of motorcycling is closely tied to battery bikes, but most of the major manufacturers aren’t openly working on electric two-wheeled projects.
And in the last couple of years, when a manufacturer has released a battery-powered prototype, it’s usually been a scooter-like vehicle with questionable styling, ripped straight from anime cartoons.
The closest thing we’ve seen to an electric motorcycle from the Big Four was Honda’s concept bike that made the show circuit last winter, and Mugen’s racebike (supposedly developed from that machine) that hit the scene at the Isle of Man’s TT Zero this summer.
But according to Visordown, Kawasaki is actually hard at work, developing their own e-bike. They’ve got their hands on patent drawings, showing Team Green has been designing different components of an electric motorcycle, including an air cooling system for the machine’s battery.
Could the next Ninja be battery-powered? It would certainly be interesting if Kawasaki brought out an electric bike- it might force the other manufacturers to look at following their steps.
I am still waiting. I want to trade in my Ninja 250 for an EV Ninja. Love the thought of eliminating almost all maintenance. Winter storage would be a breeze. Just top off the battery once a month for storage, no need to worry about stale gas.
Does anyone really want an electric bike? With bikes capable of 100 mpg that have a range of 200+ km readily available, why do we need them?
Plenty of people would love a motorcycle that comes with low maintenance and fuel costs. Plenty more folks would also love it if it was fossil-fuel free.
It would probably cost less to run in terms of fuel/electricity than a scooter and would have way more power. If you could get cheap insurance to boot it would be the ultimate in town commuter (maybe ICBC would rate it as the lowest CC size because it has no CC’s??)
I would ride one if the cost of electric bikes wasn’t so high, 99% of my riding is in town and FAR less than 200KM in a shot