First look at electric Kawasaki Ninja and Kawasaki Z electric motorcycle, coming out in 2023
Kawasaki took to the EICMA Milan Motorcycle Show to unveil a trio of electric motorcycles, with Electrek front and center to see the action live. The Kawasaki Ninja EV and Kawasaki Z EV were revealed as traditional battery electric motorcycles, while the company also unveiled an HEV hydrogen-powered concept motorcycle.
I’ll spare you the uninspired cliché about “Team Green going green,” and we’ll just get to the bikes.
Electric Kawasaki Ninja unveiled
While the electric Ninja and Z models are both still in prototype form, Kawasaki Motors president Hiroshi Ito announced to the audience that the two models would be available for purchase next year.
As Ito explained:
This is the Z Battery Electric Vehicle shown briefly at Intermot and now the very first Ninja BEV. These BEV versions represent two of Kawasaki’s leading brands, Ninja and the Z. Soon these pre- production machines will become actual production machines available to our customers in 2023.
As has been common with electric motorbike unveilings at EICMA this year, hard and fast tech specs are nearly non-existent on the models.
However, Ito did provide two key pieces of info, explaining:
European A1 license compliant, they will bring exciting ‘good times’ to daily commuting. They each have a large battery capacity of up to 3.0 kWh with two 12 kg battery packs that are easily removable.
Those two nuggets point to extremely muted performance from the bikes. Ito wasn’t kidding when he described them as fulfilling a daily commuting role. A1-compliant motorcycles in Europe have a maximum motor power of just 11 kW. That’s not particularly powerful, and puts the bikes in a 125cc-equivalent class.
Perhaps more striking is the limited battery capacity. 3 kWh of battery is diminutive compared to most electric motorcycles today. Batteries from Zero Motorcycles range from around 7 to 17 kWh, while Energica offers over 21 kWh of battery.
Even small, low-cost electric motorcycles like the SONDORS Metacycle and Ryvid Anthem, both of which are designed for commuter roles, offer at least 4 kWh of capacity.
Thus, it is unlikely for the Ninja EV to boast a range much higher than 75 km (47 miles) at city speeds, and likely around half of that range at highway speeds.
The removable batteries are surely designed to compensate for the low capacity, offering an easy way for riders to charge their batteries at home or in an apartment. But with today’s flagship electric motorcycles offering 5-7x as much battery as Kawasaki’s new entries, it is hard to imagine the brand will be competitive in the space when the motorcycles launch next year.
Of course, these figures shouldn’t come as a complete surprise. We’ve known that Kawasaki was planning a low-performance electric motorcycle for some time.
At the same show three years ago, Kawasaki rolled out a prototype electric Ninja that rocked a 10 kW motor (20 kW peak rating) and claimed a range of 100 km (62 miles).
At the time we assumed that the bike would undergo significant development to improve its performance, but that hasn’t seemed to be the case.
The bikes look impressive, no doubt. But under those panels rest a small and underpowered motor coupled to a pair of batteries smaller than the ones in the my electric scooter.
Why use such small batteries?
The only reason I can think of for Kawasaki to outfit their electric sport bikes with batteries sized for a scooter is because that might be exactly what they are: scooter batteries.
Kawasaki has spent years as part of a battery development consortium in Japan, originally created among the Big Four of Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki, and Suzuki.
The consortium’s original goal was to develop a standard for swappable electric motorcycle batteries. In actuality, it is starting to look like the growing consortium is simply defaulting to Honda’s Mobile Power Pack design, which is essentially a Gogoro-style scooter battery.
Honda’s MPP batteries are the right size and capacity to fit into Kawasaki’s spec sheet, and so the company could be planning to incorporate those batteries into its motorcycles. Looking through the vents in the display prototypes shows a lack of batteries at all, so it is still anyone’s guess how Kawasaki ultimately plans to power its electric motorcycles.
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If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you combine a fruit cart, a cargo bike, and a Piaggio Ape all in one vehicle, now you’ve got your answer. I submit, for your approval, this week’s feature for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column – and it’s a beautiful doozie.
Feast your eyes on this salad slinging, coleslaw cruising, tuber taxiing produce chariot!
I think this electric vegetable trike might finally scratch the itch long felt by many of my readers. It seems every time I cover an electric trike, even the really cool ones, I always get commenters poo-poo-ing it for having two wheels in the rear instead of two wheels in the front. Well, here you go, folks!
Designed with two front wheels for maximum stability, this trike keeps your cucumbers in check through every corner. Because trust me, you don’t want to hit a pothole and suddenly be juggling peaches like you’re in Cirque du Soleil: Farmers Market Edition.
To avoid the extra cost of designing a linked steering system for a pair of front wheels, the engineers who brought this salad shuttle to life simply side-stepped that complexity altogether by steering the entire fixed front end. I’ve got articulating electric tractors that steer like this, and so if it works for a several-ton work machine, it should work for a couple hundred pounds of cargo bike.
Featuring a giant cargo bed up front with four cascading fruit baskets set up for roadside sales, this cargo bike is something of a blank slate. Sure, you could monetize grandma’s vegetable garden, or you could fill it with your own ideas and concoctions. Our exceedingly talented graphics wizard sees it as the perfect coffee and pastry e-bike for my new startup, The Handlebarista, and I’m not one to argue. Basically, the sky is the limit with a blank slate bike like this!
Sure, the quality doesn’t quite match something like a fancy Tern cargo bike. The rim brakes aren’t exactly confidence-inspiring, but at least there are three of them. And if they should all give out, or just not quite slow you down enough to avoid that quickly approaching brick wall, then at least you’ve got a couple hundred pounds of tomatoes as a tasty crumple zone.
The electrical system does seem a bit underpowered. With a 36V battery and a 250W motor, I don’t know if one-third of a horsepower is enough to haul a full load to the local farmer’s market. But I guess if the weight is a bit much for the little motor, you could always do some snacking along the way. On the other hand, all the pictures seem to show a non-electric version. So if this cart is presumably mobile on pedal power alone, then that extra motor assist, however small, is going to feel like a very welcome guest.
The $950 price is presumably for the electric version, since that’s what’s in the title of the listing, though I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. I’ve bought a LOT of stuff on Alibaba, including many electric vehicles, and the too-good-to-be-true price is always exactly that. In my experience, you can multiply the Alibaba price by 3-4x to get the actual landed price for things like these. Even so, $3,000-$4,000 wouldn’t be a terrible price, considering a lot of electric trikes stateside already cost that much and don’t even come with a quad-set of vegetable baskets on board!
I should also put my normal caveat in here about not actually buying one of these. Please, please don’t try to buy one of these awesome cargo e-trikes. This is a silly, tongue-in-cheek weekend column where I scour the ever-entertaining underbelly of China’s massive e-commerce site Alibaba in search of fun, quirky, and just plain awesomely weird electric vehicles. While I’ve successfully bought several fun things on the platform, I’ve also gotten scammed more than once, so this is not for the timid or the tight-budgeted among us.
That isn’t to say that some of my more stubborn readers haven’t followed in my footsteps before, ignoring my advice and setting out on their own wild journey. But please don’t be the one who risks it all and gets nothing in return. Don’t say I didn’t warn you; this is the warning.
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Environment
Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
Today’s episode is brought to you by Bosch Mobility Aftermarket—A global leader and trusted provider of automotive aftermarket parts. To celebrate Amazon Prime Day July 8th through 11th, Bosch Mobility is offering exclusive savings on must-have auto parts and tools. Learn more here.
The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.
As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.
After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:
We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming.
Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:
- Electrek FSGP 2025: New teams, new cars, same solar spirit
- Congress votes to send 2 million US jobs to China, increase deficit, energy costs
- Tesla (TSLA) confirms 384,000 deliveries in Q2 2025, right on expectations
- Tesla prototype sparks speculation: a Model Y, maybe slightly smaller
- Tesla launches Oasis Supercharger with solar farm and off-grid batteries
- Tesla unveils its LFP battery factory, claims it’s almost ready
- Here’s why Ford’s electric vehicle sales crashed by nearly a third in Q2
- The Chevy Equinox EV is GM’s breakout star, but that’s not the only surprise
- Xpeng launches G7, a new Tesla Model Y competitor for just $27,000
Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET:
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