Kawasaki’s Electric Ninja Should Be For Sale *Very Soon*

[advrider]

It seems Kawasaki’s electric naked bike and sportbike should be on the market very soon! The web-crawling sleuths of Motorcycle.com have found paperwork that shows the new Kawasaki electric bikes have passed homologation in Australia, which is an almost-sure sign they are getting ready to be pushed out to showrooms.

We have seen these bikes teased for some time now, including similar paperwork unveiled last summer that indicated the bikes would come to the US in 2023. Then, we got a pretty good look at Kawi’s electric plans at the 2022 EICMA show. Now, that Aussie paperwork confirms Kawasaki is bringing the machines in under the names Ninja e-1 and Z e-1 (for the fully-faired and naked bike versions, respectively).

The machines appear to be a mash-up of EV parts (a motor and battery, obviously) with Ninja 400 and Z400 bodywork and frame and some running gear off the Ninja 300 series.

That parts list should give you your first hint that these bikes might carry the Ninja and Z branding, but they are far removed from the machines that grabbed the public’s heart starting way back in the 1980s, when Tom Cruise hooned around Southern California aboard a Kawi superbike, wooing Kelly McGillis in between flights in his F14 and the occasional shirtless beach vollyball sesh. There is no triple-digit horsepower. Sorting between various documentation, it appears Kawasaki rates these bikes in the 12-14 hp range.

However, torque will be a different story, and we expect these bikes to have plenty of grunt all the way through their rpm range. And while other battery bike makers have emphasized eyebrow-raising muscle in their PR, an understated EV would be welcome, if it actually backs up its claims in the real world, comes with decent battery range, and is affordable.

As this isn’t an INTERMOT show year, we would instead expect an official reveal at EICMA this fall… but we also expect plenty more leaks like this stuff from Oz in the days to come.

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