California-based Zero Motorcycles has unveiled its 2016 model lineup in preparation for the American International Motorcycle Expo in Orlando, Florida. If you were hoping to see a long-range Zero electric motorcycle with an aerodynamic fairing, 2016 is not your year. Instead, there’s an all-new motor and increased battery efficiency to improve range and battery capacities across the board, triple-speed charging with the new Charge Tank accessory, and a couple of new models to add to the family.
- The new motor appears on the S, DS and SR as well as the new DSR and FXS bikes. It won’t be fitted to 2016 FX models.
Improved battery chemistry has boosted the monolith batteries’ capacity by around 4 percent, taking the largest pack from 12.5 to 13 kWh and boosting the S bikes’ city range from 185 to 197 miles (298 to 314 km) if you have a Power Tank installed.
Improvements are more dramatic on the FX series bikes, which get a 14 percent boost in capacity. A fully loaded FX with two battery modules now gets some 82 city miles (132 km), where the old bike got 70 (113 km).
If quicker charging is your priority, you can install the US$1,988 Charge Tank accessory, which works with all 2016 S, DS, SR and DSR bikes, as well as their 2015 counterparts.
The Charge Tank enables you to hook into a public J1772 spec charger to power your bike up some three times faster than on a regular outlet. It’s still not gasoline levels of touring convenience, with a full Level 2 charge on the large 13 kWh monolith battery still taking three hours. But an hour on the charger will now get you up to 53 miles (85 km) of riding, and the vast majority of charging will still be done at home, for next to nothing.
There are thousands of J1772-spec chargers in the United States, and committed electro-tourers can continue to beef up their onboard charging systems with third-party gear from companies like Hollywood Electrics to bring charge times down even further.
New for 2016 is the DSR, effectively the DS dual-sport bike with the beefed-up 70-hp (52-kW), 106 ft-lb (144-Nm) powertrain from the awesome Zero SR. That’s some 25 percent more horsepower and a whopping 50 percent increase in torque from the DS. Range and battery capacities are the same for the DS and DSR bikes, although it stands to reason that in real-world conditions where you tap into that extra torque, you’re probably going to drain the battery quicker on the R model.
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