Brainiac Neal Saiki launched a revolution with his electric motorcycle. But is the country ready to take a ride?

When a motorbike tears down the trail and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

Not if it’s electric, and with the recent development of an off-road dirt bike that runs on batteries, emits zero fumes and goes zero to 60 in four seconds, the sound of silence has never been so fast, so clean and so promising. The bike, called the Zero X, is assembled in Scotts Valley at the home base of

Zero Motorcycles, a progressive tech company founded in 2006. Zero Motorcycles has patented new concepts and streamlined existing ones in developing the Zero X, which sells for $7,500 and costs about one cent per mile to use. Sales have amounted to about 60 bikes in the past year, and a backlog of several dozen more orders suggests that the future in electric automobiles, though silent as the dawn, is gearing up for an explosive acceleration.

“The European and American public is ready for this,” says Zero Motorcycles founder and chief technology officer Neal Saiki. “The demand is already beyond our capacity to produce and we’re looking at expanding.”

Saiki owns most of the technology, which he has patented, leaving him to explore and play—that is, conduct “research and development”—in a market almost all his own. A 41-year-old technological entrepreneur with nearly 30 patented inventions in the sack, Saiki graduated from Cal Poly 18 years ago with a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering. He moved to Santa Cruz in 1990 to work for Santa Cruz Bicycles as a mountain bike product developer. His college experience provided a base for exploring the possibilities in technology improvement while his ambition and sense of curiosity would drive him to the cutting edge of innovation. Saiki played a major role in designing the full-suspension dirt bikes so standard today. He also helped make improvements in function and efficiency of bicycle drive-chains, and he has since invented other features and gadgets in various fields, from medicine to rock-climbing to aviation and, most recently, to electric vehicle technology.

Saiki was born in Santa Cruz but spent a chunk of his childhood living in Colorado, where mountains, trails and cliffs invited him to play. He took to climbing, mountaineering and mountain biking, and his scientific mind always perceived that while humans can accomplish marvelous feats—like pedaling up fearsome grades and scaling cliff walls too daunting for even a mountain goat— nothing enhances and extends human ability like gadgetry and technology. Engineering, he would discover, was just in his blood, and later, at Cal Poly, he led a research team, funded in part by NASA, Boeing and other corporations, in designing and building a magnificent machine named the Da Vinci IV, a carbon fiber helicopter with propellers 100 feet in diameter, weighing 98 pounds and operated by leg-powered pedals. Saiki and his team completed the Da Vinci IV in 1989, then placed professional racing cyclist Greg McNeil at the wheel. Tremendous quadriceps exertion totaling one horsepower took aeronautics to new heights; for several seconds the machine hovered at nine inches above the ground. The Da Vinci IV’s brief career thus ended, but the achievement demonstrated that in terms of technological efficiency the sky is the limit.

“That was mostly just to set the standard for how efficient a helicopter could be,” Saiki says. “It pushed the envelope and made people rethink what a helicopter could do.”

NASA’s interest in the helicopter was vested in the goal of one day developing the technology to explore planets like Mars, where the thin atmosphere would demand a highly efficient flying machine to move about. In 1995 Saiki attained greater aeronautic heights, literally, when he helped design and build a propeller-powered airplane that achieved an altitude of 86,000 feet—a record for its category of plane. The technology has since been used in building cost-effective spy planes and in atmospheric research.

But Saiki has kept the greatest presence on the ground, in the field of two-wheeled machines. Although the local says he is not a particularly avid user of either pedal- or motor-powered vehicles, he still keeps an ear to the wind of necessity and has sensed the need for soundless dirt bikes, which in many coastal counties—Santa Cruz included—are restricted by noise ordinances.

“Many off-road riders just don’t ride because of the laws,” Saiki notes. “There are strict ordinances all over and they’re heavily enforced. Even on your own land, if someone calls in about the noise, they’ll make you stop.”

So the market for the Zero X was idling, ready and waiting, says Saiki, and four years ago he began to analyze the obstacles faced by previous attempts to build a fast, powerful electric bike. Weight-reduction had been the primary challenge in building efficient electric vehicles. Innovators of the past have “built” electric cars by simply replacing the combustion engine with a crude electric one. Such products have inevitably been sluggish, overweight machines dearly short of horsepower, range and activity time.

“You can’t just swap out the engine and expect it to function,” says Saiki. “You really need to develop a vehicle from the ground up.”

Saiki did just that. Relying to a great extent on computer simulation to test stress, motion and aerodynamics, he curtailed and minimized on all components of the bike, striking an optimum balance between weight and strength. The Zero X’s aluminum frame weighs just 18 pounds—one-fourth the weight of a conventional motorbike bike frame. The battery pack, too, has long been a heavy snag in the field of electric vehicle development. In previous forms from other designers, this component has generally weighed more than 200 pounds. That of the Zero X weighs just 40 pounds, with the entire bike weighing 140.

The battery is also a non-toxic, landfill-approved item, with parts of it recyclable. Based on lithium-ion technology, the battery contains no cobalt, nickel, mercury or lead. The lithium itself is bound in salt molecules and cannot readily leak into the environment. On the bike, there is no exhaust pipe and direct emissions are none. Saiki presented the Zero X on a limited basis to the market last year, when he sold 25 of the bikes to hobbyist riders and pro racers. Tested in the field and on the trail, the Zero X has received positive reviews, and the consensus is one of approval. The pros vouch for the machine as one with the capacity to compete against most gas-guzzling, earth-shaking conventional motorbikes. With a range of 40 miles, the Zero X can reach 60 miles per hour and takes two hours to recharge plugged into a standard electrical outlet.

Like all non-solar electric vehicles, though, the bike pulls its electricity from the grid. The grid pulls its electricity largely from coal-burning plants, and in the end the skeptic must ask, “Is anything gained? Does the net pollution generated by this electric vehicle ultimately equal that of a gas-guzzler? Should we be looking at biofuel technology instead?”

Not necessarily, says Saiki, who has calculated the residual, trickle-down energy expenses in running the Zero X. Even with dirty coal-generated electricity factored into the equation, the Zero X produces one-seventh the greenhouse gases of a gas-powered motorcycle and one-tenth that of an average car. Electrical power, he explains, is extremely efficient in converting energy into forward motion. The energy-in to energy-out ratio is several times higher that that of combustion engines, in which most of the energy expended goes straight back out the tailpipe as exhaust fumes, particulates and expired debris. Just 18 percent of the energy from combustion can be harnessed as horsepower, says Saiki, whereas, by remarkable contrast, an electric motor delivers 90 percent of its energy into the motion of the vehicle.

So why didn’t this happen sooner? After all, the concept of electric vehicles is not a new one. Mostly, says Saiki, the interest wasn’t there. “The auto industry does not want to adopt this technology,” he says. “The cornerstone of their business is oil, and big auto makers will probably not get into this for at least five years.”

And for the little guys the challenge of reducing the heavy battery pack constituted the most oppressive challenge, but Saiki wasn’t deterred. He and his wife invested their own savings in what the experienced engineer saw to be a land of promise, lightly trod, with plenty of elbow room and virtually no competition. Today, Saiki sees a bright future in electric vehicle development. There is money to be had and a name to be made. The global off-road biking market is a $12 billion industry, says Saiki, but, for the benefit of society at large, he has his eyes on paved ground, too. In fact, Zero Motorcycles has already developed a street bike based on the same technology. Extremely light, absolutely silent, emissions-free and fitted with all the required signals and lights, the machine, called the Zero S and due for release this fall, will be of legal freeway status and will have the rear storage space to accommodate the battery charger—which the Zero X must leave behind on its bumpy forays—for repowering at the workplace or other locations away from home.

As an extracurricular project, Saiki is already on his mark in the race to make another pedal-powered helicopter. The American Helicopter Society is holding an upcoming competition in which entrants are challenged to design and build a chopper, find a very, very fit operator, and send the machine aloft for at least one minute to an altitude of at least 9 feet off the ground. Saiki, with experience in the field, intends to win. The best-performing helicopter will be put on display at the Smithsonian.    

The Zero X may be just the beginning of a long road into a quiet, low-emissions future. The bike serves a niche recreational marketplace, but Saiki believes it will convince much of the public that electric vehicles are efficient and practical.    

“Our goal with this bike is to prove that electric motorcycles can be clean, fast and fun. You can have your cake and eat it, too. It’s a trouble-free motorcycle and once we prove to the public that electric vehicles are efficient, I think we can move ahead.”

But the game is not entirely about profits, for Saiki, who is brimming to the eyelids with creative energy to be burned.

“I really just enjoy optimizing things. I like them more efficient and doing things that people haven’t done before, like making the fastest electric bike. I believe there’s really no limit in improving technology.”

Saiki expects to make continual design improvements in each year’s new release of the Zero X, but for the most part he is satisfied with all aspects of the bike. The next major step for Zero Motorcycles is to expand its breadth of production. He foresees automobile development not far off in the future, and though he hopes to keep the company headquarters based in Scotts Valley, with its easy access to the experts and products of Silicon Valley, he foresees worldwide production.   

“I want to keep doing research and development in Santa Cruz, but Europe is where a big part of the future is. Europe is five years ahead of us in environmental and green technology. They offer really great financial incentives for people to own green automobiles. They really want this.”

For Saiki, as a businessman and innovator, the sky is the limit. The same goes for gas prices and the atmospheric carbon load, and with electric vehicle technology blazing a clean, quiet path into the future, Americans will soon want it, too. 

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