Zero has collaborated with San Francisco's Huge Design to produce this super-futuristic take on the brand's SR/S electric sports tourer. Snub-nosed and snub-tailed with a wide slot of a headlight, the SR-X looks like it dropped out of Cyberpunk 2077.
We've long been big fans of Zero's work; the first time I rode the SR back in 2014, my eyes were immediately opened to the potential of electric performance bikes, and my mouth was immediately opened to release a string of joyful profanities. When the first proper upgrade arrived with the SR/F naked and the fully-faired SR/S in 2019, it came with a big performance boost, rocking a beastly 190 Nm (140 lb-ft) of torque, 110 peak horsepower (82 kW), and a range up to 201 miles (323 km) with the optional "power tank" on board.
Looks are subjective, of course, but the SR/S was a pretty conservative-looking steed. Fair enough, too; faired sports-tourers with upright riding positions tend to appeal to middle-aged folk that are starting to eye off pipes and slippers. Folk like yours truly, who'd probably look profoundly silly getting around on anything too radical, or tubular, or lit, or whatever it is the kids say when they mean "good" these days.
But Zero seems ready to take the platform in a new, and very exciting visual direction. It gave an SR/S to Bill Webb, of Huge Design in San Francisco, and let him go nuts on it.
The resulting SR/X concept is unabashedly front-heavy, with the trellis frame and motor visible behind angled lower fairings. The front-end loses its grandpa screen – and probably a bit of highway range along with it – but ends up with a modular and sleek look with the forks coming up through a large gap. The tail end loses its back seat, and gains a stubby backside inspired by those weird German streetfighters back in the day. There are a couple of other nice silvery details, including a circular footpeg mount and something under the tank that looks like a kind of handle.
Underneath, the guts of the bike are largely untouched, and as such, this is far from a complete overhaul and more of a body kit. But the effect is tremendous; the SR/X takes Zero to a super-futuristic place and would snap necks on the street, if everyone's nose wasn't buried in their smartphones.
According to Zero's VP of Product Development Brian Wismann, the concept "exceeds expectations, and points the way forward for our internal design teams" – so perhaps something like this may indeed go through to production one day. Mind you, it'd probably look a lot less funky and futuristic with some mirrors, indicators and a license plate on it.
Webb's work has inspired production design at Zero before. The 2022 Zero FXE was developed from a Huge Design concept around the theme of consumer electronics, and it came out a better looking machine for it. So we hope Zero takes a swing on the SR/X design and gets it onto the road at some point relatively unmolested; in my opinion, it's up there with the (also non-production) Triumph TE-1 as one of the best-looking electric motorcycles we've seen.
Check out a video below.
Source: Zero Motorcycles
