Kawasaki is a bit late to the electric motorcycle game, especially when compared to American motorcycle companies like Zero and Harley-Davidson’s LiveWire. That’s why the company’s promise late last year of three new electric motorcycles to be launched in 2022 was received with such excitement. But now we’re getting word that the first of those models may be a bit underwhelming, at least if you’re old enough to lace your own boots.
Between a recently released teaser and an early leak on Kawasaki’s own site, the first consumer Kawasaki electric motorcycle seems to be an upcoming electric balance bike for kids.
The product will likely be known as the Elektrode, though the name and basic design are the only major details we know about it for now.
If the Twitter teaser is to believed, we’ll likely learn more on June 7.
But for now, we can see a child-sized rider, a child-sized bike, and a pump track that looks like it’d be a fun setting for both.
Take a look for yourself, below.
The bike itself is visible in the reflection of the visor, though it doesn’t provide any major hints.
We’ve seen electric balance bikes and other e-bikes for kids before, with companies like SUPER73, Harley-Davidson, and Razor offering their own takes on electric two-wheelers for small riders.
Swedish electric motorcycle company CAKE also recently got into the kid’s e-bike action.
But Kawasaki will be coming a bit out of left field here, especially since this would be the brand’s first production electric motorcycle, albeit a motorcycle for kids.
Providing a bit more info, a leak regarding the Elektrode model was discovered by Motorcycle.com, with Dennis Chung explaining that “the biggest clue is a test page from Kawasaki’s web developers that had accidentally gone live. This particular test page (one of several that are currently public) is for an accessory license plate frame for a Kawasaki Teryx, but there’s a new item on the navigation menu for the Elektrode electric balance bike. According to Google, the page has been live since at least May 9, but we expect it will be taken down soon.”
Kawasaki isn’t entirely new to electric two-wheelers, as Team Green has been playing with prototypes for several years now.
The company first shared specs for a potential prototype electric motorcycle back in 2019, though the figures were rather underwhelming.
Now it looks like Kawasaki may be taking a shortcut toward the launch of its first electric motorcycle as a kids model. But that still leaves two more electric two-wheelers for 2022, assuming the company sticks to its promises.
And I don’t think that electric goat robot counts as one of them, either.
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