After years of designing world-class mountain bikes for Santa Cruz, Mountain Cycle, and Haro, Neal embarked on a mission to develop the world's highest performing electric motorcycle, the Zero X.

Neal's frame designs have won multiple World and National Cup titles. Mountain Biking Magazine named one of his recent designs "2006 Bike of the Year for Cross Country.”

Earlier in his career, Neal worked as a project manager at NASA developing high altitude research vehicles. While he was in college, Neal set a World Aviation Record by creating the first successful human-powered helicopter. He holds masters degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.

Gene Banman grew up riding his Dad’s Honda 90 into the San Gabriel Mountains above Los Angeles.  When he went to college it was with his Honda 305 Scrambler, the granddaddy of today’s dual sport bikes.  In his “old age” he has been spending most of his trail time on a full suspension mountain bike, which coincidentally was designed by Neal Saiki, our founder.  Gene joined Zero Motorcycles because he felt this new category of electric motorcycles was desperately needed in the world.  He also felt that the industry needed another American Motorcycle company.  He wanted to apply his 30 years of business experience to this task.

Gene was an executive at Sun Microsystems where he ran the Workstation/Desktop Computer Business Unit, the Sun Japan subsidiary and a number of other sales and marketing jobs over a 15 year period.  He was CEO of NetContinuum and President of Mirapoint.  He has a Physics degree from UC Berkeley and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon.  He is dedicated to making sure Zero Motorcycles is run by competent, caring people who design and build great electric motorcycles and support our customers to the limits of our ability.

Jer Stewart has been added to the Zero Motorcycles team as the Events & PR Manager.  She brings a vast experience in the motorcycle industry with her. She has worked as an Office Manager/Service Writer at a local motorcycle shop, Customer Service Manager for a large motorcycle manufacturer, Operations Manager for a track day company and raced an EX250 and an R6 in the AFM (American Federation of Motorcyclists) for eight years.  Her knowledge also includes working for Venture Capital, Software, and Biotechnology Companies here in Silicon Valley.  With her expertise, Zero Motorcycles will be involved in and attending many motorcycle and electric vehicle events.