Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/118161
straddled in Terminator 2. In its first year of production, Zero Motorcycles sold just a few dozen bikes, half of which went to green-conscious Canada, mostly to B.C.ers. In the two years since it has added 54 employees and surpassed the 1,000-motorcycle mark. According to director of marketing Scot Harden, it also has serious venture capital backing and sales projections look like a hockey stick. "They're not just evolutionary," he brags of Zero's electro-rockets, "they're revolutionary." That's not marketing bravado from an eco-prosthelytizer, either. It comes from a man, now in his mid-'50s, who has jockeyed fossil-fuel-burning engines professionally for almost 40 years. An American Motorcycle Association (AMA) Hall of Famer, Harden won his share of Baja 500s and Baja 1000s before going on to manage factory race teams for KTM and BMW/Husqvarna. And from his THE MAJESTIC SWEEP OF YOSEMITE Valley (top) and view of Half-Dome make it tough to keep eyes on the road. (right) Zero Motorcycles HQ; no engine noise to talk over; there's a gas-pump symbol on the instrument panel, but that's a battery, not an engine block. (far right) Zero Motorcycle's legendary Scot Harden, then and now. 38 W E S T W O R L D p36-41_Calif.Cycle.indd 38 >> moustache down to his cowboy boots, he's still that desert rider who has covered almost half a million km off-road, racing and touring all over Africa and North and South America. To have a die-hard from the old guard hitch his wagon to electric is an incredible vote of confidence. "It's the future," he asserts. "Somewhere down the line, every other bike on the road will be electric." Waiting for our test drive, the talk drifts from motorcycles to movies. The film script Steve McQueen was working on when he died is being revived, and Zero Motorcycles may have a cameo. Harden remembers being 14, bumping along the Nevada desert on his dirt bike to catch Bruce Brown's 1971 classic, On Any Sunday. The documentary filmmaker, already famous for his 1966 surfer ode Endless Summer, had applied his same gentle touch to the burgeoning subculture of motorcycling. His co-producer: Hollywood leading man and avid rider Steve McQueen. The coolest man alive influenced a whole generation of new motorcyclists. And transfixed by what he saw on the screen, Harden was one of those kids, hiding in the theatre bathroom to watch back-to-back screenings. "Yeah, that movie," he says, "changed my life." We're soon accelerating into the forested hills for a spin, Zero's street-legal bikes all twist-and-go, no gear-shifting necessary, the power delivery even and sprightly. The only noise is the wind through my helmet and gentle whirr of moving parts. Though we've just stepped off a 110-horsepower BMW touring bike, these electric mounts don't feel like they lack for guts, either. Flying along sundappled laneways, the sensation is of a free ride – propelled without any exertion or discernible form of combustion. The fun factor is ridiculous. "That's the proof right there," says FA L L 2 0 1 1 8/17/11 12:22:27 PM