Is it possible to make one sport bike that does everything? When Kawasaki created the Ninja 7 Hybrid that must have been the design brief, because this motorcycle is truly a jack of all trades. Based on the cheap and cheerful Ninja 500 platform, but lengthened six inches to fit an extra 121.2 pounds of battery and electric motor, the Ninja 7 Hybrid provides electric propulsion assist for around-town and traffic riding, but stuns with superbike acceleration from a stop. At its core, the Ninja 7 Hybrid has the fuel economy of a 250 with the acceleration of a liter bike. It even has reverse! It should be one of the greatest bikes of all time.
I hoped that spending a weekend ripping this bike around some of Southern California’s best roads would make me fall in love. Sadly it isn’t the love of my life, but it was a hell of a fun fling.
Full Disclosure: Kawasaki invited me to San Diego to see the pinnacle of dirt bike racing up close and personal. The bike manufacturer put me up in nice hotels, fed me some good food, and loaned me a new Ninja 7 Hybrid to ride around for a couple of days. I drove my own car to Southern California for the event.
I should start by explaining a little bit about how this bike works. There are so many buttons and modes, and the learning curve is steep. The first thing you’ll note when you sling a leg over the saddle is that there is no left foot shifter and no clutch lever, and you’ll notice it many more times throughout your ride when you go to grab a lever or click a downshift. More about that later. There are three main riding modes for this bike, and I’ll dig into each for my impressions.
In EV mode this bike is a lovely little around-town commuter for dozen miles or so, depending on terrain. The battery has a fairly small 1.37 kWh nominal capacity, and there’s no plug to charge the battery, so you’re relying on regenerative braking and engine charging to top it up. The electric motor only makes about 12 horsepower and only operates in the bottom four gears, so EV mode is only good for about 42 mph and acceleration is tepid at best, but good enough to keep up with surface street traffic. Electric mode shifts the transmission automatically, so you can pretend like you’re on a sport-bike-shaped e-scooter, and that’s pretty much the vibe. It’s a nice mode to have, but unless your morning commute is under a dozen miles and all surface streets, you won’t be using it often.
Eco Hybrid mode is an interesting one, and I found myself using it quite a lot. In this mode you have your choice of automatic transmission or thumb-shifter manual. The auto mode shifts up super early, around 1200 RPM, so you might find yourself in sixth gear before you hit 40 miles per hour, which is certainly not the quickest way to get anywhere, but it sure sips fuel. I saw around 80 miles per gallon in around-town riding in this mode, which I found impressive. It’s not very dynamic, and again, rides much like a sport-bike-shaped scooter. The auto shifts are clunky, as you’d expect a low-RPM upshift to be, and I found it a bit jarring to buck three or four times before reaching the other side of the intersection. Pop it in manual and you can hang on to those gears as long as you want with a more economical tune than sport mode.
Sport Hybrid mode is quite obviously the best of the bunch. This mode can’t be ridden in automatic, so you’ll have to remember to tap those + and - buttons whenever you need a gear. The shifts in Sport are crisp enough to make the ride engaging, but much like any early single-clutch manumatics from sports cars of 25 years ago, it can be a little jerky if conditions aren’t precisely perfect. It’s definitely good enough to get a little hustle going on a twisty road and have a lot of fun with it, but a traditional toe shifter is certainly more precise.
Here’s where things get interesting. When you’re in Sport mode with a wrist full of twist, you can jab the only button on the right that matters: the e boost button. This easily-reachable button gives the bike “I’m giving it all she’s got, captain!” power for up to ten seconds. You can use this to jam past a slow car on the highway, or shoot up out of a corner when you reach a long straight on your mountain road rip. It’s exhilarating and joyful acceleration that feels like the “Fast And Furious” movies make hitting a nitrous button look. You can also pre-load this button when you’re stopped at a traffic light so that when you take off from a stop you’re giving it the full liter-eater beans. Kawasaki claims a 0-60 time of 4.2 seconds for this bike, but it sure feels a lot quicker than that.
There’s a lot to like about this bike. I spent about 300 miles in the saddle over the course of three days, and didn’t find it too uncomfortable. The seat is a little on the stiff side, but not so bad that I couldn’t run a full tank of fuel through it without getting off to stretch. Maybe the whizbangery of the hybrid system would get old after a month or so, but I was constantly excited to flip through modes and try something new. It’s definitely like riding a normal motorcycle, but with so much abnormal about it to keep things spicy.
So far all of this sounds incredible, right? Where is the downside, you’re asking? Well, let’s get into it.
Far and away my biggest gripe about this bike is the shift between full electric and hybrid. In order to swap from EV to HEV you can’t be travelling at more than 16 miles per hour. More than once I was running in electric mode on surface streets and went to merge onto a faster stroad or highway and topped out at 42 miles per hour before realizing the gas engine wasn’t going to kick on and let me accelerate faster. I would have to pull over and slow down to less than 16 in order to kick on the gas engine and get back on the road. This seems to me not only an annoyance, but a safety issue. I’m sure if you owned this for a long time you’d just get used to it, but I’m not sure you should have to.
It’s also, uh, pretty heavy for a sport bike. At 502.7 pounds ready to ride, the 450-cc engine is giving its all and needs every bit of the bonus electric power to keep up. The acceleration is strong, and it’s a pretty handy bike in sweepers, but the longer wheelbase and extra weight conspire to make tighter mountain roads a little unwieldy. On a big open race track the Ninja 7 Hybrid would probably walk a lot of bikes, but on the switchback Mount Palomar roads I took this machine to visit I probably would have been quicker and more comfortable on the basic Ninja 500. I could stand to lose 50 pounds myself, but so could this bike.
This gripe pales in comparison to the other two, but I found the switchgear a little too busy and difficult to operate without screwing it up. More than once I went to tap the upshift button and hit the similarly-shaped high-beam flasher. On the front side, I definitely thumbed the horn a few times when I meant to be grabbing for a downshift. It’s the little things that make you comfortable on a bike, and a couple of these mis-shifts left me a little gun-shy of riding any faster than about six tenths.
My smallest gripe of all is that this bike doesn’t look special. I pulled in to a little roadside convenience store on a twisty road that bikers frequent and started chatting with them about the ride and how beautiful (though cold) the day was up on the mountain. Nobody gave this boring silver-painted steed a second glance until I mentioned that it was a hybrid. Some riders like a Q-ship, but if I were spending this much money I’d want it to stand out a little more. Kawasaki made this bike understated, when it should have been shouting about its tech-forwardness with bright paintwork and a massive in-your-face HYBRID livery.
Speaking of money, it isn’t cheap. At $12,499 the Ninja 7 Hybrid is an impressive $6,100 more expensive than the Ninja 500 SE ABS it cribs its gasoline engine from. Admittedly there is a ton of cool tech in the hybrid Ninja, and I see where the money was spent, but it’s a tough pill to swallow. Then again, if you want one bike that can do it all, maybe this is where you look.
Everything about this motorcycle should appeal to me. Early adopter tech folks with a city commute will thrive on this bike, and will probably be able to keep up with most riders on a weekend blast to the twisty roads. Frugal at the pump with a secret speed fetish, the Ninja 7 Hybrid is just a few implementation tweaks away from being a great bike. It makes a lot of sense on paper, but maybe isn’t quite the right formula to stir the soul just yet. Motorcycle buying in America is such an emotion-driven purchase. If we bought motorcycles with our brains, this thing would sell out in an instant.
If Kawasaki keeps pressing on with hybrid bike tech, it could have a hit on its hands in one or two generations. The first Toyota Prius was also a compromise that didn’t really fit anyone’s lifestyle, but after four generations of development it’s probably the best daily driver on the planet. In time, maybe the Ninja will be everything for everyone.
Is this bike a connection to the future where hybrid motorcycles have been perfected? For a first real attempt, the Ninja 7 Hybrid kind of kicks ass. It’s a damn good motorcycle, but it’s not quite a great one. I like it a lot, I just didn’t love it. Put in a bit of work and some investment, Kawasaki, you’re on the right track.
