 I'm Peter Harrop, I'm Chairman of ID Tech X and we've returned to the stand here at Zero Motorcycles because we're so fascinated by this business that we want to drill down a little bit more into the technology and the strategy of the business and because what seems at first sight to be which it is, the world's largest maker of genuine motorbikes that are genuinely zero emission, pure electric and fabulous they are, there's more to the story and I want to examine this a little bit with Jim Callaghan of Zero Motorcycles, Peter, hello Jim and let's just drill in a little bit. The motor that you developed, this motor, I understood that you found that what was on the open market was really not up to the job for what you wanted which is amazing because we reckon there are about 200 companies that say they make traction motors for electric vehicles, forklifts, whatever and it sounds like you're telling us that the 200 didn't do the job. I think I understood it when you started that you basically said, look, it doesn't have to be water cooled, we think we can make it generate the heat near the edge and therefore if we can use these fins, there they are, we've got ourselves something that's giving us a right performance and I saw figures that you published that actually showed an improvement in performance, did I get that right? That's true, a lot of that holds true over our history, so zero motorcycles you have to remember, we started in 2006, we were dinosaurs back then, we were probably a question that nobody was asking when it came to what was an electric motorcycle and at the time our founder, he took what was essentially a downhill mountain biking frame and using what was available to him from different catalogs, he was finding electric motors and electric batteries, buying them and bolting them on and calling them products. Never ever quite getting us to the point where we were proud enough to put our name on the side of the vehicle and say, this is what we stand for. And so if necessity is the mother of all invention, it turns to us to start investing in our engineering core and trying to develop products that meet our demands and for our customers to give them the performance and a product that we can be proud of. So a motor nowadays is very intimately related to its motor controller, they call them loosely inverters, they're much more than an inverter aren't they? Do you make your own motor controllers then? So what we do is we're in partnership with some controller manufacturers where we're using a stock controller with our own embedded code on it and that's code that we've developed over the last 12 years. So if you think we started in 06, in 2008 we actually entered into mass production with the first zero motorcycle and the technology that you're seeing here, this is fourth fifth generation motorcycles that we've brought out. And so as the technology has kind of been refined year after year after year, we've created a system where we work with our own vehicle control unit, we've developed our own battery management system, it's our battery, it's our motor that we designed in-house 100% and then our controller with our embedded code on it. We even have a charger which is a, it's an off the shelf charger that we put our own code and turn it into a smart charger if you will. All of it works holistically together as a system. Yeah, it has to be a system. Exactly, and so if you think about a motorcycle, it's a tiny little space. The entire powertrain has to fit essentially between your knees and motorcycles lists, they usually want fairly demanding performance out of their machine. They wanna go fast, they wanna have fun, they wanna pull out into traffic and have a reliable experience. They wanna know exactly what the unit's going to do. And so as we challenged our design engineers right from the very beginning to develop a really good motorcycle, we wanted them to be always pushing for a compact, energy dense, fast power, high power discharge rate. We wanted good charging, we wanted refined usability across a world of different environments. Like anybody else, you take a product, you build a product, you put your sweat and your blood and your tears into it and then you hand it over to a customer and a customer uses it in a way that you could have never imagined. And... And imagine it, yeah. Although you're doing all that and that's very commendable, you're not really making a motorbike for a hundred thousand bucks for Hollywood film stars, you're actually down to a price. Yeah, you know, there are a lot of ways to go about building a business, but for us, what we wanted to do was we wanted to focus on dependable, reliable, good, hard transportation. We wanted a product that was exciting to ride, it was intuitive, it would be simple, and yet at the same time, it would deliver an incredible value proposition. So here in the United States, the motorcycle range itself goes between, say, 9,000 and maybe $18,000 US. That's everything, that's all in. And so we have, pick a number, six to eight different models of the motorcycles and it's all modular. So I offer three different batteries, I have three different motors, there are three different controllers, and you can kind of mix and match and put that together. And if you think about it, I now have a product range or a powertrain range that goes anywhere from 20 kilowatts all the way up to, say, in combination over 100 kilowatts of really good, robust power delivery in a way, in a very tiny, compact frame. And this is mainly a get you to work vehicle around the traffic trams or is it mainly a leisure product in the eyes of your customers? Are most of them buying it as a weekend leisure product or what? It depends on where. And it's hard to say that there's any one hard and fast rule as to why people are buying the zero motorcycles. The good thing about motorcycling, it's an incredibly individual passion. Some people think of it as a lifestyle, other people think of it as a sport, but almost everybody that buys a motorcycle buys a motorcycle in order to communicate something that they feel intimately about themselves that they want to communicate to the rest of the world. And so we're finding that our customers are using them for transportation, they're using them to commute, they're using them for recreation, they're using them with their peer groups, with their friend groups, they're taking their loved ones on motorcycle rides, and as the technology is just getting better and better and better, we're now able to charge in a one hour, we have a motorcycle behind me that will go over 200 kilometers in a full charge. The motorcycles really have become what people expect and what people need. That's brilliant, and in a way you're vindicated by Yamaha has them now, and so does Harley-Davidson, yes? You know what, as far as I'm concerned, we need more electric products in order to create more of a swell, there's more awareness, there's more social acceptance, there's more opportunity for people to get involved, and we welcome anybody and everybody to get into the space and to be able to offer amazing products to people. We're going to continue to build the best bikes that we have. We created the category of electric motorcycles. We will always be the company that defined what an electric motorcycle is, and we'll continue to do so now and long into the future. That's brilliant, and in terms of all the powertrain you've developed, you've created a powertrain activity where you are putting, I mean, are we talking about that three-wheeler or has that got your powertrain in? It does, it does. And the, yeah? And the car. Zero motorcycles has always decided to be a motorcycle manufacturer. Right. People always make two-wheeled motorcycle products and put our brand on the side and sell them. We're not necessarily interested in becoming a manufacturer of other types of vehicles. So that's a company called Vander Hall. They're good partners of ours. They're actually manufactured in Provo, Utah, and this is actually the first time that we've had an opportunity to bring the vehicle out and display it as a true partnership. But we work with the folks at Vander Hall. They had a demand from their customers. They've been making internal combustion engine variants of this car and some of their other cars for a couple of years. They're incredibly successful. They make a beautiful product, and their customers were calling and asking them for an electric variant. And so they turned to us and we have a powertrain division where, again, we pushed really hard on our engineering team to come up with a really unique powertrain solution that has this waterproofing, weatherproofing, rugged, impact-proof, compact, density, high-performance type of... No water cooling? No water cooling at all. Never anywhere in any of our products. Not many cars can say that. Exactly. So everything that's on this stand, the motorcycles, the car, and the three-wheeled auto cycle, are all passively air-cooled, all of our components, the motors, the batteries, the controllers, nothing but passive air-cooling. How much does that sell for that? That car right there, the MSRP on that vehicle is $34,995. Dollar for dollar. I'm not sure you can get a better value in an electric vehicle today than that. Motor is permanent magnet. It's neodymium in China. Do you worry about price hikes? You know, it's interesting times that we live in. The last couple years have been completely unprecedented and there are a lot of things that every day we wake up and we watch the news and we scratch our heads at. Do we worry about price hikes? Yeah, of course we do. Are we trying to insulate our business and make sure that as a global manufacturer we're gonna do anything and everything in our power today and tomorrow to make sure that we've got a good supply and that we can be flexible? We do. And I've got an amazing team that backs up behind us that's working with people all over the world to try to make sure that zero is always going to stay at the very bleeding edge of not only the technology but the ability to build really good components and vehicles. It's rather interesting. It's not entirely logical to us as observers. Within the car firmament, you have some people like BMW who love the carbon fiber and you have people like Jaguar who are really into the world of aluminum and yes, some composites, plastics really. You're really aluminum and plastic guys, are you? Yeah, that's fair. You know, again, for us we're more focused on building something that's a really intuitive motorcycle product and we haven't had the need to try to spend additional money on all of these exotic types of materials to bring out a product that not necessarily anybody and everybody needs. There are other manufacturers that are building motorcycles that are way more expensive than ours are. For us, it was this idea of building something where the only products, the only components that would be on our motorcycle were the essential components to make it an incredibly good handling, good performing vehicle. With electric bikes, different worlds, I think one of the reasons why they're not that successful in the West is they get stolen. But is there an issue with the theft of motorbikes and do you give some reassurance, you know, technology that reduces the risk of theft or is it not really an issue? I think that we have a similar kind of theft or anti-theft protections that all the other industry, the motorcycle industry follows. So, you know, we have keys and locks and the vehicles don't operate without the different technologies that we have in it, but we haven't gone to the point where it's fingerprints or any kind of Batman-related types of technology. What is your point in trying technology at it if it's not a serious problem? Your customers don't complain about theft and not pleading with you to deal with that. I mean, it's very real with bikes. For sure, yeah. Our motorcycles still do weigh 400 pounds, so it's not easy to pick them up and throw them in the back of a truck, so. Yeah, today, thankfully, we haven't had that as a big swell from our existing customers. And industrial design, I mean, they are superb. They look good. They're really professional. A lot of the motorbikes, electric motorbikes out there from various startups are not only, I'll say it, ugly, seriously ugly, not aerodynamic, very, very expensive, but you've made something that's very professional. Now, did you draw that or did you introduce industrial designers, so tell me the secret. Well, I tell you what, thank you, and I will make sure that the guys back home get those types of compliments. We work with a great core of designers that are in-house. It's a team. One of the things I'm maybe most proud of is if you have an opportunity to come and visit our offices, which are just outside of Santa Cruz, if you walk through the engineering department, almost every one of our cubicles where there are engineers, almost every one of them has a motorcycle helmet hanging on the back of it. And there have been a lot of guys that have gravitated towards our company because they're enthusiasts, but they're also professionals. And there's a good group of guys that have been there for a long, long time, including some of our designers. So they've been working on this technology, these products for a long time. And yeah, there are definitely hours you can see that they're visual elements. I did see that a year ago, but I'm sure you've changed since then. Actually, with the company that has the victory and the Indian brand in Minnesota, they, I went in there once and there were a lot of trash helmets there too, enthusiasts, but I guess I ought to ask them, but I thought they bought the Bramo capability out of Oregon and they were doing a pure electric victory. But it seems a long quiet. So are you aware of what they're up to? So I can't speak for them because I don't work there. My understanding is that project is either on hold or just completely discontinued. I have great friends that work there as well. You know, at the end of the day, electric is definitely coming. I think that anybody and everybody who's looking towards the future is thinking about what electric products that they need and their options are either to design it and bring it to market on their own or turn to a company like us who has 10 years of experience and working with very, what I'll call mature technology and having a chance to bring us on board as a partner and come to market faster than you could do it on your own with a much more reliable product. Well, it's a privilege to talk to the leader. Absolutely. We appreciate that. We appreciate what you're doing. It's very impressive. Clearly, you can take your technology into a lot of other vehicles and you're not trying to do everything yourself. And I think that's wonderful because you can leverage, you can get economy of scale by having your powertrains in all manner of things. And it's a wonderful synergy with the world of small cars, with the world of go-karts. And I'm sure you've got some other things planned that you don't want to talk about, but it's really nice talking to you and thank you very much for your time. Thank you. And if you have an opportunity to come visit us in Santa Cruz, California, I please hope that you will come by and see our operation. Thank you, my friend. Thank you. Thank you.