Kawasaki EV Prototype Unveiled At INTERMOT

[advrider]

We’ve seen teasers from Kawasaki’s electric motorcycle program for many months now. We’ve even seen the Elektrode low-power production model debut, for kids. But, what we haven’t seen is Kawasaki taking the wraps off a mostly-ready electric motorcycle and telling us “There it is—that’s what we’re working on, and you can expect it in showrooms soon.”

After the INTERMOT show opened yesterday in Cologne, Germany, we’re still not at that stage, but we’re pretty close. Kawasaki revealed a new electric motorcycle prototype at the show, and it sure looked like it could be ready for production in the near future.

The new machine is clearly based off Kawasaki’s Z400 naked bike, which is itself based off the Ninja 400 sportbike—this is an evolution of existing motorcycle design, not a ground-up re-imagination of motorcycling. That makes sense; the Ninja 400 and Z400 are incredibly popular on showroom floors, and they’re well-known for their dynamic handling.

How will that handling change, when you put an electric motor and battery into the machine, instead of a highly-developed parallel twin? If this machine makes it to showroom floors, we’ll find out.

“Hey, don’t leave the lights on! You’ll kill the battery, and that’s *really important* on this machine!” Photo: Kawasaki

Although Kawasaki didn’t get into a lot of technical specifics, you can clearly see the battery and electric motor stuffed into the space where you’d usually see a gasoline engine. Instead of a belt drive, as is common on electric motorcycles, Kawasaki went with a chain drive. Much of the rest of the bike (frame, wheels, bodywork, even the tires) appear to be lifted from existing models from Kawasaki’s lineup.

Masaya Tsuruno, managing director of Kawasaki Motors Europe, was on-hand to share details about the company’s plans for carbon neutrality in years to come, but shared no juicy technical deets on the prototype. Instead, we got the usual talk about how Kawasaki is planning for the future and exploring all options and so on. Same old, same old, from all the major manufacturers over the past half-decade. We have seen a few electric scooters and hydrogen prototypes, but we’re still waiting for a major Japanese OEM to develop and sell a functional electric motorcycle.

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