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[MostlyBonkers]

I was in the Bedford area a few weeks ago and decided to drop by Supamoto, a Kawasaki dealership that also sold Zero motorcycles. Unfortunately it had shut down. That prompted me to look for my nearest dealer on Zero's website and it came up with an address on the continent. Does anyone reading this know any more about it?

[Richard230]

I seem to recall that someone posted a notice last year that Zero had pulled out of the UK market.  I believe that the explanation was that it was because the UK was not supporting electric motorcycles with financial incentives.  Less than a year later, Brammo moved into the UK market. 

[protomech]

Yes, essentially. They still have a service shop open, but at least for now they do not have a distributor.

http://www.electricmotorcycleforum.com/boards/index.php?topic=3488.0

There are a couple of UK owners on the evfr.net map including Justin who posts here.

[Justin Andrews]

Streetbike in Halesowen, Birmingham are the UK service center for Zero Motorcycles, and are handling all the warranty work.

(By the way, Streetbike are a really good dealership in general)

While they cannot sell new Zero's at the moment, they are optimistic that Zero will re-enter the UK market, and they do occasionally get second hand Zero bikes in. So if you are after a second hand UK Zero, they are the best dealer to talk to at the moment.


http://www.streetbike.co.uk/

[MostlyBonkers]

Thanks Justin, Richard and Protomech - very interesting. It was a shame to see Supamoto go out of business. It makes me wonder how many Zeros actually got sold in the UK last year. I believe the 2013 production run was about 1500 units, which seems very low to me.

[Justin Andrews]

I don't have the exact figures, but not many.

Frankly its going to be an REAL up hill battle to gain any sort of acceptance. Bikers as a rule are notoriously conservative, especially here in the UK.
However, sit an your average biker on a decent electric bike, and a lot of the time you will impress them. I've done this myself with the ZF-9 on more than one occasion, and I reckon the ZF11.4 will only impress more.

I do think that electric bikes will be a strict minority in the UK for the foreseeable future.

[MostlyBonkers]

Hats off to you for taking the plunge Justin. I test rode the 2013 Zero S last year and really enjoyed the experience. The cost just wasn't practical for me though. I'm still fascinated by them and would love to own an SR.  Do you know any other UK owners?  I shall get in touch with Streetbike so they can let me know about second hand models.

[Justin Andrews]

I don't know any other UK owners directly, I really wish there was some form of UK owners club.

[zap mc]

The problem is Zero s lack of support of UK dealers as without a dealer network then the product will never flourish. Most dealers in the UK bought stock and then were treated badly by Zero and gave it up. There are a few people with UK bikes but Zero are not interested in supporting their products which makes you wonder how they expect to get a good reputation in the future. I have just looked at the European network and they are dwindling as well. If a dealer cant make money from the product then why bother? Shame

[protomech]

Zero has arrangements with several service centers, I'm not sure it's as simple as a disinterest in supporting their product. Either the UK dealers weren't making sales targets or Zero needed to focus their resources elsewhere.

Disappointing.

[zap mc]

Well as you can see Supamoto went bust and last time I spoke to them Streetbike were still waiting for factory diagnosis equipment so last time I checked there was no after sales support in the UK whatsoever. Maybe that's changed now? Even when Zero knew the common problems with the bikes they refused to send any parts to the UK in readiness to fix the bikes and made the customers go through a pointless and long winded "diagnosis" procedure that most posters on this site could have diagnosed themselves. Only then would they ship the parts that we all knew were needed in the first place, further annoying the customer and everyone in the chain and causing weeks of unnecessary delay and further loss of reputation. Zero ended up selling directly to end users also and bypassing their dealers! So it's little wonder that it is difficult to sell their bikes when they are your main competitor!
In practice you had 3 months to sell their bikes before they announced next years models and made your current stock obsolete and devalued it to the extent that you would be lucky to sell it and break even! Pathetic

[MostlyBonkers]

Some really interesting comments here. It's such a shame that a market like the UK with great potential has been such a damp squib for Zero. I think our government could be doing a lot more to stimulate the EV market here. They're probably worried about the loss of tax revenue. They've got the motorist over a barrel.

[zap mc]

It was very disappointing to experience the government's attitude to giving a rebate for electric motorcycles I tried to lobby for this but the people handing out the money were just absolute morons. Afterwards the ministry responsible apologised and promised to look into the matter and as we are now still nothing has happened and the situation remains exactly the same again just morons on top of morons.

Zero are equally to blame in my opinion as they could not sell their way out of a wet paper bag. They spend their money on an army of staff who do very little except tick boxes, but when it comes to PR and supplying press bikes or any type of promotional activity they are really blind to it. They are just too stupid to understand the basics of how to sell an electric motorcycle. When your market research shows that there is a price resistance to your products at £7995 what do you do? If you are Zero you increase the price of your products to £11 995 and then wonder why no one is buying it. Doh!

[MostlyBonkers]

It's a shame Zero couldn't lobby government themselves. Maybe they tried too. I empathise with your frustrations zap, and others too. Such wasted effort by good people with a keen eye to the future.

[Justin Andrews]

Chatting with the Zero Rep at the time, he did say that he had chatted to the government, but the impression he got was that there were not enough motorbikes to bother with as the amount of emissions that it would reduce was negligible. Personally I think that attitude from the UK government is pure BS, and that mass use of EV motorbikes for commuting is a good idea.

But that's clearly just me.