Zero SR/F 20th Anniversary EditionEV motorcycle startups have come and gone. Zero has somehow been doing this since 2006.Twenty years is a long time in the modern-day motorcycle business. In the electric motorcycle business, where promising startups can appear with a flashy prototype and disappear before you've memorized their names, it's practically geological. Yet Zero Motorcycles has somehow made it from a California garage in 2006 to 2026, and it's celebrating the occasion with a rather gorgeous 20th Anniversary Limited Edition SR/F.Only 40 examples are being built worldwide, split evenly between North America and Europe. Zero starts with the SR/F, then gives it a jet-black and gold treatment along with carbon-fiber front and rear fenders, smoked turn signals, black headlight wings, and a black aluminum flyscreen. There are also billet mirrors, bar ends, a lever protector, reservoir caps, black grab rails, anniversary graphics, and enough other darkened bits to make a normal SR/F suddenly look underdressed.Charging Up The FutureYamaha Is Taking Its EV Motocross Concept Global. We're StokedIntel's CEO Just Bet On Ultraviolette, And Its Electric Motorcycles Are Coming To AmericaUnderneath all the anniversary jewelry is the familiar SR/F powertrain. Zero quotes 111 horsepower and a frankly silly 140 pound-feet of torque, which is a useful reminder of just how far this company has come. Zero's first motorcycles weren't sleek 100-plus-horsepower streetfighters. Founder and former NASA engineer Neal Saiki started developing electric motorcycles in a garage near Santa Cruz, California, mixing lightweight mountain-bike and motocross ideas with electric propulsion.What followed is basically a condensed history of the modern electric motorcycle. The early Zero X took the concept off-road, the S brought it onto pavement, and the SR started turning up the performance dial. Eventually we got the SR/F and faired SR/S, followed by the DSR/X adventure bike and, more recently, smaller machines including the X Line. Zero has spent two decades figuring out where batteries and motorcycles make sense together, sometimes by simply trying stuff and seeing what sticks.Zero SR/F 20th Anniversary EditionZero SR/F 20th Anniversary EditionZero SR/F 20th Anniversary EditionPhotos by: Zero MotorcyclesAnd that's what makes this anniversary more interesting than another black-and-gold special edition. Zero has survived an era packed with electric motorcycle companies promising revolutionary batteries, absurd performance, futuristic factories, and imminent world domination. Some made great motorcycles. Some never really made motorcycles at all. Meanwhile, Zero just kept developing the things, through changing technology, changing expectations, and an EV market that still hasn't completely figured out what electric motorcycles are supposed to be.So yes, the 20th Anniversary SR/F is basically a very fancy birthday present. But limiting production to 40 bikes gives it some genuine significance, particularly since only 20 are coming to North America. More importantly, it marks two decades since an electric motorcycle company started tinkering in a California garage and somehow stuck around long enough to become one of the old guys in the room. In this corner of the industry, that's probably worth celebrating.Source: Zero Motorcycles
+78 others
