So I was very excited to score myself an invitation to come and visit Zero's head office and factory to see where the company is at, get to know the Zero team, and ride the company's entire 2015 range through the breathtaking mountain ranges of California. It was a great chance to talk about batteries, production lines, the 2015 Zero range and how America's fast-charge infrastructure is letting riders down.

Fueled by a very impressive commitment from the New York-based Invus group, Zero Motorcycles has ramped up its production capabilities to become pretty much the only company manufacturing electric performance motorcycles at any kind of scale. Between Zero's home base outside Santa Cruz, California, and its small European office, the company now employs some 138 full-timers and has a capacity to manufacture between 15 and 18 bikes per day.

That's small bikkies in the world of manufacturing, but a major achievement in the performance electric motorcycle game. I specify "performance" because cheap electric scooters sell in the order of tens of millions of unitsin China, but these low-speed, low-range commuters are a world away from the type of high performance fun machines that Zero and other companies are trying to popularize in the West.