UMC - 063 XP ⚡️ ZERO / Untitled Motorcycles

Website  Facebook  Instagram  Twitter  Vimeo

XP ZERO

Developed in partnership with Zero Motorcycles

Design: Hugo Eccles, Founder & Design Director

Build: Untitled Motorcycles, San Francisco

SPECIFICATIONS

Length: 80” / 204cm

Width: 27” / 68cm

Height: 39” / 98cm

Seat: 30” / 76cm

Weight: 481lbs / 218kg

Range: 80-160mi / 130-260km

Speed: 124mph / 200kmh

Bodywork

• Custom-designed, CNC’d polymer panels with frosted polycarbonate edges

• Custom seat, upholstered in ultrasuede, UMC tag

• Custom CNC’d 6061 aerospace aluminum seat shell

• Custom CNC’d 6061 aerospace aluminum nose and intake

• Custom CNC’d 6061 aerospace aluminum bellypan

● Custom CNC’d 6061 aerospace aluminum fork brackets

• Aerospace Material Specification AMS-36375 ‘Ghost Grey’ experimental aircraft paint

Frame & Suspension

• Tubular steel spaceframe

• Showa SFF-BP 43mm self-balancing forks, adjustable preload, compression, rebound, modified

• Twin 320mm NG floating front discs with dual J.Juan 4-pot calipers

• 3.50 x 17” cast alloy front wheel

• Showa GK01 monoshock with piggyback reservoir

• 240mm rear disc with J.Juan single-pot floating caliper

• 5.50 x 17” cast alloy rear wheel, Gates Carbon Drive belt

• Pirelli Diablo Supercorsa tires (180/60-17 rear, 120/70-17 front)

     

Drivetrain

Supplied by Zero Motorcycles

• Zero ZF75-10 - 102v, 900A electric motor with clutchless direct drive

• Zero ZF14.4 Power Pack - 112 Li-ion NMC cells, 102v nominal (116v peak), 14.4 kW/h 

• Zero 3.0 kW charger unit, relocated and modified

Controls

• Custom CNC’d top bracket with integrated speedometer and dot matrix display

• Custom clip-on bars, with internal electronic throttle

• Motogadget Motoscope Mini LED display, integrated into custom top bracket

● Dot matrix ‘D/N’ display, integrated into custom top bracket

• Custom-molded grips

● Ruffy 5-way thumb joystick with custom-molded rubber cover

• ISR brake master with integrated switches, internally wired

• Goodridge Sniper 2 braided stainless steel brake lines

• Custom CNC’d 6061 aluminum footrest brackets with ABS heel guards

Electrics

• Zero Cypher III display, integrated into ‘tank’

• Motogadget m-Lock keyless RFID ignition, integrated into ‘tank’ screen

● Custom anodized aluminium RFID key fob

• Motobox custom LED tail light array with integrated turn signals

• Motobox custom LED panel edges

• 4XLED twin headlights

THANKS TO

Sam Paschel, Zero Motorcycles

Sean McLaughlin, Zero Motorcycles

Brian Wismann, Zero Motorcycles

Dan Quick, Zero Motorcycles

Mark Muraoka, Zero Motorcycles

Lazer Vandenhoek, Zero Motorcycles

Eland Eggers, Zero Motorcycles

Garrett Landon, Zero Motorcycles

Jamie Perugini, Zero Motorcycles

Jessica Raya

Nate Diepenbroek Fabrications

Simon Waterfall

Anuj Pushkarna

Darrell Schneider, DS Restorations

Ray Man, Motobox / Radiantz

Turk, Turk's Shop

Victor Wilkens, 3D-CAD

David Lecoeuche, 3D-CAD

Junyi ‘Tracy’ Li, 3D-CAD

Nick Nieminen, 3D-CAD

Jacob Baldry, 3D-CAD

Simone Mancini, photographer (@simone.m_photography)

Ludovic Robert, photographer (@ludovicrobert)

Elliot, Champion Powdercoaters

VOK Precision Engineering

Bill Schnoebelen, Circuit Case

Air Canada Cargo

Goodwood Estate

ELECTRIC DREAMS

A PARALLEL REALITY

Hugo Eccles is co-founder and design director of Untitled Motorcycles, a company based in San Francisco and London that designs and builds custom motorcycles for both private clients and factory brands like Ducati, Moto Guzzi, Triumph, Yamaha and Zero. He’s also a professor of industrial design. Below, he examines the design approach to a recent build in partnership with Zero Motorcycles. 

When Zero Motorcycles approached me with a potential project, we’d been dancing around each other for a while. I’d moved to San Francisco in 2014 and soon after began reaching out to electric motorcycle companies like Mission, Energica, Alta and Zero and asking for test rides. Northern California, after all, is the epicenter of the electric vehicle industry in America. Riding the Mission R, Alta Redshift, Energica Ego and Zero SR were the first truly new motorcycle experiences I’d had since the groundbreaking Honda CBR900RR Fireblade ushered in the era of the superbikes in the early nineties. The experience ignited a burning obsession to build an electric motorcycle.

One morning in May 2018, I received an enigmatic email from my contact at Zero: “We may be entering a window of opportunity to work on something unique and cool...” I don’t think it really hit me until I was being escorted through a series of security doors to the workshop at the heart of Zero’s Scotts Valley headquarters. They were offering me exclusive access to their SR/F platform, two years into development, and still some ten months from public launch. I would be the first designer-builder in the world to get their hands on Zero’s brand new technology.

Fuck yeah.

My background is somewhat unusual for the motorcycle world in that I’m neither a trained mechanic nor an automotive designer. I studied industrial design at the Royal College of Art in London and have worked on everything from consumer electronics for household brands, to watches for TAG Heuer and Nike, to concept cars for Ford. My design training informs my approach to building motorcycles. For starters, I’m conscientious about not being dogmatic about what a build is going to be until I’ve got a clear idea of what I’m working with. Typically, before I do anything – sketches, study models, anything – I’ll strip a motorcycle down to its rolling chassis of frame, engine and wheels. That done, I can study the lines, understand what relates to what, see where there are natural intersections, and get a sense of the spirit of the machine. I’m asking the motorcycle what it wants to be.

Once I’ve a handle on this, I can begin to reshape the motorcycle by what I add back. This approach works well with combustion machines because, inevitably, there are a number of elements that you have to replace – fuel tank, carbs, exhaust, and so on – and these are all opportunities for redesign and reduction. An extreme example of this was the process of designing the Hyper Scrambler, which I’ve half-jokingly described as continually removing components until the motorcycle stopped working and then reinstalling that last part. It’s not that far from the truth. Lotus Cars founder Colin Chapman said it much more eloquently: “simplify, then add lightness.”

Our ideas of motorcycles are based on the history and the limitations of the internal combustion engine.

However, as I discovered, this isn’t necessarily a useful methodology with an electric motorcycle. Once I’d taken off all the plastic parts, I realized that none of them were truly required to make the motorcycle function. An electric motorcycle doesn’t need any of those traditional elements since there’s no fuel and no exhaust. There’s a ‘gas tank’ but it’s just a storage compartment and not essential to the functioning of the machine. So, if you didn’t need any of these things, what did you need? Had I just intellectualized myself out of a project?

In my 25 years as a designer, I’ve never met a problem I couldn’t solve, but I’ll admit there was a moment when I thought there’s nothing meaningful I can do here. Then it dawned on me: I’d been looking at the problem all wrong. I didn’t need to re-design the motorcycle – I needed to un-design it. Our ideas of motorcycles are based on the history and the limitations of the internal combustion engine. With the introduction of electric those constraints and those ‘rules’ disappear. An electric motorcycle doesn’t need any of those combustion elements – tank, exhaust, and so on - but still designers resist the opportunity to design without those rules. It’s no longer a limitation of technology that’s holding us back but, instead, a limitation of confidence. This was a unique opportunity – maybe a once in a lifetime opportunity - to completely reimagine a motorcycle from the ground up.

Then it dawned on me: I’d been looking at the problem all wrong. I didn’t need to re-design the motorcycle – I needed to un-design it.

Although I didn’t yet know what I did want to do, I had a clear idea of what I didn’t want to do. Most electric builds that I’d seen mimicked traditional combustion motorcycle tropes which seemed a redundant exercise. Why put a ‘gas tank’ on an electric motorcycle? Why make an electric bike look like a gasoline motorcycle at all? It made no sense to me. Style-wise, electric motorcycle concepts generally seem to fall into one of two camps - either retro-nostalgic or expressive-sculptural - and I wanted to avoid both because, to my mind, they’re merely superficial styling exercises that sacrifice functionality for esthetics. So much more is possible.

One thing I knew for certain was that the end result had to be unmistakably electric. It would celebrate what makes an electric motorcycle unique instead of hiding it apologetically behind bodywork. I wanted to use a first principles approach – borrowed from industrial design - to create an entirely new visual language for this new category of electric. With most electric motorcycles little of the form prepares you for the very different experience that you’re about to have. If the motorcycle resembles a conventional motorcycle, you’re going to naturally expect a conventional riding experience. But nothing could be further from the truth, and I felt that the visual language needed to communicate that this was going to be a very different experience.

If the motorcycle resembles a conventional motorcycle, you’re going to naturally expect a conventional riding experience.

When people think about electric they naturally think about the future, but I started my design process by looking backwards. From the late-1880s onwards there was an explosion of ideas about motorcycles - no industry standards had been established, and every motorcycle company had their own opinion on what this nascent technology should be. This set me thinking about a modern motorcycle from an alternate reality where, instead of developing gasoline motorcycles for the past 135 years, the industry had been developing electric motorcycles. What would an electric motorcycle from this parallel 2020 look like? Transported from that timeline into our own it would be both familiar and unusual. That’s what I set out to create with the XP - not a future reality but a parallel one.

Without the limitations and constraints of internal combustion, a motorcycle from this parallel 2020 could be much simpler, with fewer components. This parallel reality would be constrained by the same rules of physics, not to mention similar economic realities, so things like conventional forks would remain for expediency and practicality.

A modern motorcycle from an alternate reality where, instead of developing gasoline motorcycles for the past 135 years, the industry had been developing electric motorcycles.

Earlier experiments had confirmed that almost no traditional bodywork was necessary on an electric motorcycle apart from surfaces that the rider could grip with their knees for control. That insight started me thinking about designing human and machine ‘control surfaces’. Human control surfaces would be typical things like foot pegs, heel guards, seat, knee pads, and handlebars. Machine control surfaces would be aerodynamic panels, venting and so on.

I’d had a couple of test rides on a pre-production SR/F and was blown away by the sensation. The linear and continuous delivery of power – the drivetrain makes an astounding 140 foot-pound of torque (almost double the power of a gasoline superbike) and has no gearbox – felt like piloting a small jet, so trying to embody that experience felt like a good design direction. 

It felt like piloting a small jet, so trying to embody that experience felt like a good design direction.

Guided by this concept, I gathered and organized hundreds of images of experimental aircraft, WTAC cars, Moto GP bikes, winglets, canards, diffusers - anything and everything that inspired me around ideas of control, speed, and aerodynamics. After a few weeks of intensive work I had approximately five hundred pages of sketches and an overall design direction I was happy with. The motorcycle would consist of two main visual elements: an electric core comprised of the batteries, motor, controller and charger; and an analog chassis supporting the suspension and body panels. The seat would be integrated into the central powertrain to give the rider the impression that they were literally sitting on the ‘engine’ of the motorcycle. The structural frame would feature ‘floating’ aerodynamic panels held away from the tubework. The XP would be, literally and figuratively, a deconstructed motorcycle.

In parallel to developing the physical form, I also continued to develop the motorcycle’s story. If it was from an alternate present it would also, logically, have an alternate past. The aerodynamic influences suggested that it might have a racing history - perhaps a retired track bike that had been retrofitted for regular road use. This idea of retrofitting gave me latitude to attach roadgoing elements in a more natural manner, not unlike the way headlights are installed on endurance racers. Similarly, the tradition of painting prototype race bikes in plain colors started to sync with an emerging idea of using an aerospace-spec coating to reflect the motorcycle’s experimental nature. I eventually settled on Aerospace Material Specification ‘Ghost Grey’, a government-standard color assigned to US Navy experimental aircraft.

There’s something inherently ghostlike about electric motorcycles. Although on the surface a small difference, the dual nature of electric motorcycles - simultaneously analog and digital – fundamentally changes the essence of the motorcycle. No longer is the motorcycle just passive inert machinery but, instead, actively animate technology able to predict and anticipate. I wanted to create a distinct and recognizable difference between the XP’s inactive and active states. When off, the intentionally monochrome motorcycle appears colorless and ‘dead’. When approached, the motorcycle recognizes its rider, illuminates its panels, and becomes ‘alive’.

No longer is the motorcycle just passive inert machinery but, instead, actively animate technology able to predict and anticipate.

I suppose it’s an occupational hazard, but I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of the motorcycle industry. I wonder about the direction it’s headed, and who will be the ones to steer it there. Some traditional motorcycle manufacturers seem dangerously complacent - repeating the same old methods but somehow expecting different results. Exploring new territory inevitably upsets the status quo, and potentially customers in the short-term, so most manufacturers aren’t willing to take that risk. When the original iPhone launched 14 years ago, nobody could have anticipated that an untested phone from a company with no telecoms experience was about to change the world so dramatically. Fourteen years forward from where we are now is 2034 - a time when many analysts predict that autonomous electric vehicles will be the predominant mode of transport. It’s possible that smaller, more nimble electric companies will lead the way or perhaps an adjacent industry will once again disrupt the orthodoxy with entirely new thinking.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of the motorcycle industry. I wonder about the direction it’s headed, and who will be the ones to steer it there.

So far, the response to the XP has been overwhelmingly positive. It’s taken a while to get here, but more riders are coming around to electric and many, like me, are excited to see where it can go. While the XP is a fully functioning prototype capable of being developed for production, the moniker comes from the idea of an experimental platform. As well as being a technical platform the XP is also intended as a figurative platform for dialogue about the future of electric motorcycle design. Ettore Sotsass once stated that “design is debate” and, in that spirit, the XP isn’t supposed to be the final word but the opening of a conversation. Is the XP what electric motorcycles should look like in the future? I don’t have the hubris to assume that I can answer that. What I can say is that the answer is far less important than the fact that the question is finally being asked.

UNTITLED MOTORCYCLES

San Francisco & London

Untitled Motorcycles (UMC) is a design company that creates and builds custom motorcycles for both private clients and for factory brands such as Ducati, Triumph, Moto Guzzi, Yamaha, and Zero. Founded in 2010, UMC was one of the early popularizers of the cafe racer scene with builds featured in the seminal 2013 book The Ride.  UMC has built over a hundred motorcycles including builds for GQ, Ducati, Moto Guzzi, Yamaha, Triumph and Zero. The Ducati ‘Hyper Scrambler’ was featured on Jay Leno’s Garage.

Untitled Motorcycles was co-founded by Hugo Eccles, an award-winning creative director who has led programs for the likes of AT&T, American Express, Alessi, Hewlett Packard, Honda, TAG Heuer, Samsung, Ford Motor Co., and Nike.  A graduate of the prestigious Royal College of Art in London, Eccles got his start working alongside Bill Moggridge and Tim Brown at IDEO before founding his own London studio in 1998. In 2003 Eccles emigrated to the USA as Sir Rodney Fitch's director of global product development, winning the Fitch/WPP agency nine awards in three years.  From there, he went on to head the Arnell Group’s Innovation Lab in New York City. In 2010 Eccles returned to London to work with Sir Terence Conran as Managing Director of Studio Conran, and later Design Director at Native Design. In 2014 Eccles returned to America to establish Untitled Motorcycles (UMC-SF) in California, the epicenter of custom culture and design.

@untitledmotorcycles

#UMC_SF

@hugoeccles