 Now, this is a fascinating story. I'm here to interview Ralph Czaplinski, who is the country manager for Zero Motorcycles. Zero Motorcycles is the world leader in pure electric motorcycles, and these have no compromises, these machines. We have had them exhibit at our show in California, and I remember we were always getting a new anecdote. We were absolutely fascinating because we were told then that one of these motorcycles, one customer in Texas was charging it from the local river. He'd got green all the way, so it's not only a zero-emission motorbike, but he was actually charging it with a turbine in the local river, which is amazing. I think it was Texas or somewhere, but anyway. Haven't heard about it yet. No. So, Ralph, could you lead us through? What are these models now, and how are things going with the company? Can you tell us the story, please? Sure. Where should I start? Right in the beginning, in 2006 when the Zero Motorcycle was founded. Show us what you're doing, show us the machines. It's the machines, it's all about, I guess. Okay, yeah. I brought you the latest models. It's a model year 2018. That's the two poles of our model range. We begin with the smallest bike. It's a 7.2 kilowatt hour battery powered bike, so it's the smallest, as I've said. Nevertheless, very torquey. We have an enormous torque of more than 100 newton-metre and 46 horsepower. The range of this motorcycle with this smaller battery is about 100 kilometers. It depends on your riding style, but that's what it can do. Right. Where does a Honda come from? This is very much an American company, isn't it? Forget about that one. It just has to be the website. This is 100% American company, isn't it? It is 100% made in California and Santa Cruz. This sticker is just from my Berlin dealer who was so kind to let me this bike because I... Right, so he didn't take the publicity, but... So he's a Honda dealer, originally, and he's a hot-out Honda. Actually, I think that Yamaha, Honda, and various others are working on pure electric motorbikes, but the Zero Motorcycle is ahead. We think that it's entirely possible that in a market of hundreds of thousands of motorcycles a year, this type of product could well create a billion-dollar business. It could well be well in excess of 100,000 a year, which would be multi-billion dollars, but it easily become a billion-dollar business. So I think you have our admiration. Can you lead us to the Bug-Eyed one, or that's this one, the other one? There are two different ones here. Yeah, that's a completely different motorcycle, a completely different area of application that's our high-performance street bike. It's called Zero SR. It's at 14.4, the 14.4 stands for the kilowatt-hour battery, and that's double the capacity of the smaller one. So this takes me easily 200 kilometers with a single charge. I can tell you of a world record. We had three weeks ago here in Berlin, where one of our Berlin customers rode 1,113 kilometers in 24 hours with exactly this bike. He did it by just quick charging with our charge tank and with a standard onboard charging. So you see, it is possible to do already touring with our bikes. This is our high-performance bike. As I've said, it has 146 Newton-meter torque, 70 horsepower. It accelerates from zero to 103.3 seconds. And this shows that electro-mobility is not only boring, and no max control from zero, isn't it? I mean, amazing compared with anything else. And well, of course, this is our most expensive bike, but it's funny, but it's our best-selling bike. Now, how long have you been selling the bikes in Germany? It's spread over the early days, is it? We started the European business in 2010. Oh, right. And I joined the company in 12, and since then I'm accompanying the sales in the markets, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and some Eastern European countries. And yeah, I put every year 30% on top, which is not a rocket science. Thinking of the basis where we come from, but at least it shows a tendency. So we're talking about that is on-road off-road, and this is an on-road touring bike. We have something in between. There's only two of our 800s in total, and there are dual-sport bikes, which can do both, at off-road, on-road, and in between. And so you've been selling for a while, although these are relatively new models, you haven't been selling these for all that time, and do you have a feel for where your market's leading you? What's the best-selling vehicle likely to be? It will be the high-performance bikes. We are known for premium, our customers are okay with premium prices, so our bikes best-selling are the higher-priced ones, with the most performance, most power, and the highest battery capacity, as well as the charge tank, which normally sits here, but this is not equipped with it. This is an expert, it's an accessory, and our top model equipped with a charge tank is a lot of best-selling models. Excellent, and the Germans love their cars black, don't they? Would they like this in entirely black, or do you do differences at all? We only have one color per model. It makes it easier for the customer to decide. And the white, we don't have that much experience. The first container is now coming over to Europe, but the first reaction from customers is quite positive. So, very much looking forward. And this is a very special white, as you can see. Yeah, it's a silver. They will like it. Silvery white. And I love the way it's a quality product. The whole thing is a huge quality, doesn't it? Absolutely magnificent. We get some of these hobbyist bikes that are very big and ugly, some other electric bike manufacturers have made mistakes, like putting the weight in the wrong place and having sometimes huge hub motors that alter the whole ride. But this is obviously built by people who ride motorbikes. Yeah, and they did it for a long time. Take our top engineer, the CTO, A. Pascamasi, who was a long-time right-hand of Erich Buhl, Wisconsin. He brought some really nice features from Buhl, like the mass centralization, where we have the really heavy motorcycle components in the middle of the motorcycle, as deep as possible, to get the center weight down. And it makes great handling of this bike. Yeah, and you've got an aluminium frame for light weighting of the frame. We need to save some weight, because this box here, which you can see here, this aluminium box, is full of helium batteries. And this weighs only more than 80 kilos. So it's quite heavy. And I think in the States, they're selling police bikes where they wanted battery swapping. And that was provided. Is that right? But you don't have the police bikes here? We do sell them in Europe. Ah, interesting. The first orders are coming in from German police stations. They are to be delivered soon. And there's not only police, there's special forces, there's military. Yeah, and in many of those applications, the fact you can come up silently and no one knows you've arrived can be a distinct advantage. There are so many technical advantages with our bikes, they're quiet. They are easy to maintain or there's nothing to maintain. You don't have so much down times. And the cost of operation, which is an obvious advantage of our bikes, is liked by the authorities as well. So the resale price ought to hold up well as long as the battery has a reasonable life. It says five years, that's your guarantee. And the warranty of the battery lasts five years, it should last longer. But you have a warranty for that. It does, absolutely. That puts people's minds at rest. Absolutely, they are always a little afraid of this monster battery. How much is it if it breaks? Well, of course, it's a large amount of value. But we can't tell you what it will cost after five years. No, no, sure. The next five years you're on the safe side. And the probability that it will be much cheaper in five years' time is very high. So we can't tell you. But still, as you've said, it won't be broken after five years. Our batteries are doing two and a half thousand charging cycles, full cycles, until they get down in capacity to roughly 80%. So if you... We like the car, really. The car batteries must be similar to that. If you multiply this by the number of charging cycles times the average range of a single charge, you end up in more than 400,000 km until the battery gets weaker. So that's more than a motorcycle lifetime. And what does your warranty constitute? What are you warranting for? Accident of damage? If the battery goes completely dead, you will replace it even at four and a half years. We guarantee in the next five years, if you purchase it today, we guarantee the next five years at least 80% of capacity. From the original battery capacity. Absolutely. That's great. And two years on the rest of the motorcycle were just industry started. And you sell charges? Absolutely. What's the speed of the charges? Are there different options? Give me one second. Good. Key for the bike and I'll show you. I hope I have the cable with me. But I usually don't go with all the cable. That's all you need to charge it in everyday life. That's a normal household socket. That's, as you can see, like a computer cable. We put it in here like this. And normally this is about two meters long. Put it in your household socket and with the onboard charger placed underneath here it charges from 0 to 95% in about nine hours. That's quite long. Either you work or you sleep. But we can do it much quicker. Therefore we use this space here. We get in a charge tank with a type 2 charging socket on it which will be here like a tank cap. And you can go to public charging station and charge it completely full in two hours. Less than two hours. And that makes this bike capable of doing tours. Our customers do nowadays already go to 500 km a day. You need to ride or plan your ride a little bit more You need to plan it. Not just go and look for a gas station. In e-mobility it says charge when you can and not when you have to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is like your mobile phone, isn't it? You top it up. And we don't have a memory effect that you can charge it at every state of touch. It doesn't have a battery at all. Is there competition for anyone in Europe wanting to buy an electric motorbike? For your star product here? Do you see competition? Not yet. I wish to. I'm not afraid of competition at all. I can't wait to get the big players on board because they would attract and they would attract many more of their customers on electric motorcycles. Because so many people know the existence of electric motorcycles in general or the zero in particular at all. People thought that it would limp along and they got amazed. But I think Yamaha has some off-road bikes but they're very light electric bikes. I haven't seen them in Europe. I don't know. Yamaha to launch two models already for two years now. They announced it already for Eichmarshow 2015 I think or 2016. I haven't appeared yet. And BMW had a scooter an electric scooter but that doesn't in any way compete with you. Sort of maxi scooter and not a proper motorcycle so we have complete different target groups. I like the cosmetics. I like the design. I think it looks gorgeous. Is there a reason why that one has the two lens light and this has a more conventional light? Is there a functional reason? Just styling. Just design and styling. No functional reason behind it. Well good. Thank you very much. I think this is superb. You're most impressive. You're a billion dollar company in the waiting. Thank you very much. We should follow you every year. Bye for now.