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[Richard230]

I stopped by my local all-Japanese-brand-plus-Zero dealer today and discovered that they have lost their Yamaha franchise, after 27 years of selling that brand. As you might imagine, the shop owner was not happy over those turn of events.  I thought something like this might happen when a salesperson told me about a year ago that they had sold more Zeros in 2013 (at least up until that time) than Yamahas.  I can only imagine what Yamaha must have felt about those sales numbers.  Talk about loosing "face". Getting beat out in the market to an upstart electric motorcycle manufacturer!  Somebody's head must have rolled at the distributor level, followed by taking out their frustration on the poor dealer who was trying to sell motorcycles that nobody wanted.  The times they are a-changing.   

[vchampain]

Do we have sales figures ? I mean, it seems unrealistic that zero sold more than Yamaha !

[Richard230]

Do we have sales figures ? I mean, it seems unrealistic that zero sold more than Yamaha !

I don't think anyone but the shop has their sales figures, but they sold more Zeros than Yamaha motorcycles at that particular shop last summer, according to the sales staff.  Also, this comment was made to me before the FZ-09 reached the market.  My guess is that Yamaha sales increased (and Zero sales probably decreased) later that year.  But whatever happened, Yamaha pulled the dealer's franchise and snatched all of the bikes on the showroom floor earlier this month, finally resulting in the shop being able to locate all of their Zero models at one location near the main window - and near wall power outlets. My recollection is that Yamaha was the first brand that the shop ever sold when it first opened.  Right now Yamaha doesn't appear to have a dealer within about 50 miles of San Francisco.

[vchampain]

Interesting, thanks...