from www.wired.com

I love the fact that Zero Motorcycles is blazing the way and is already producing electric motorcycles with pretty decent performance that you can buy, today. I’m not going to buy one – well, not yet, anyway – but I hope someone does, and keeps this innovative company going and brings the prices down in the next few years.

For now though, Zero X is having fun. And throwing 24 hour “electricross” endurance races.

Ten mostly silent electric bikes leaving the starting gate sounds a whole lot different from your standard motocross mad scramble where engines are revved and exhaust notes hit a high pitch all together. But I still would have loved to see the event and it sounds like all the riders and teams had a lot of fun. Wired.com has a cool story about the electricross event.

from www.zeromotorcycles.com

The last in my little mini-series of posts about alt-fuel covers a review of the Zero X.

What I love about this bike is that it looks so simple. The whole power system is a silver metal box. The drivetrain looks less complicated than the one on my mountain bike.

It seems like the Zero X definitely has it’s quirks – but I kind of like the quirky bikes. Getting to know them and master them makes the whole experience of riding seem more rewarding.

Craziness is bound to happen with this bike though. See, one of the funny “quirks” of this bike is common to electric motors: full torque happens almost immediately. So, crack the throttle, hope your body doesn’t waddle, because open it up too quickly and you can pop a wheelie so fast the front end comes all the way over before you know it.

If that sounds like a good time to you, then definitely read the review over at about.com.