Zero announces new SR/S electric motorcycle, here’s a sneak look

February might not be the best riding season, at least not in many areas of the Northern Hemisphere. But that hasn’t stopped Zero Motorcycles from announcing that it will unveil a new addition to its electric motorcycle line up next month: The Zero SR/S.

And we’re at it again.

Around this time last year, California-based Zero Motorcycles was dropping teasers for its upcoming new electric motorcycle, the Zero SR/F.

The Zero SR/F debuted as the fastest and most powerful model in Zero’s lineup. It used a new motor, the Z-Force 75-10, to create 82 kW (110 hp) of power and hit a top speed of 200 km/h (124 mph).

It added to Zero’s already expansive lineup including the Zero FX, FXS, S, SR, DS, and DSR models.

Now we’re learning there’s one more model, the Zero SR/S, that is ready to join the family.

[Update Jan 27: Thanks to a tip from one of our eagle-eyed Electrek readers, we were able to weasel our way into a video of the SR/S below, which was buried in Zero’s public site. The bike is fairly obscured by smoke, but that looks like a full fairing to me!]

Zero SR/S coming in February

We don’t know many details about the bike yet. Or to be more accurate, we don’t know any details about the bike yet other than the name: Zero SR/S.

The name alone would suggest that it is built on the SR/F platform. Zero’s playbook has generally been to produce on and off-road bikes on similar platforms, such as the FX and FXS, or the DSR and SR, where the former of each are off-road optimized despite being built on the same platform as the street bike.

The S in SR/S would tend to lend itself toward a street-oriented designation, but the SR/F is already a streetfighter motorcycle, and it doesn’t get much more street than that. Plus, the marketing images around the SR/S launch date all seem to show urban imagery such as bridges and metropolitan skylines.

We did see some spy shots of a fully faired Zero SR/F being tested last year out near Zero’s California headquarters, so there’s a good chance that we’re looking at a faster, faired version of the SR/F.

But at this point it’s too hard to say for sure, and we’ll have to wait for Zero to drip out more teasers.

Electrek’s Take

While I’m always excited to see a new electric motorcycle model coming, this one does surprise me a bit.

To be honest, I was somewhat expecting Zero’s next bike to be on the smaller side. Something closer to the current Zero FXS, designed to compete with the coming wave of smaller and more affordable Chinese electric motorcycles headed to the US.

The fact that Zero is continuing to develop on the faster and more powerful end of its lineup could indicate any number of things. Maybe the FXS line is selling perfectly fine and Zero sees no reason to expand on the smaller bike options for now. Or maybe they don’t fear the incoming Chinese electric motorcycles that could undercut Zero’s prices. Or perhaps the higher-end SR/F line is more popular than I had imagined and Zero wants to create more options for those top-tier bikes, which are likely more profitable than the smaller electric motorcycles.

Either way, this is good news for Zero any way you slice it. It shows that the company is doing well and continues to innovate with new models. Now let’s see what they can give us.