During his keynote address at Kawasaki’s EICMA presentation, Kawasaki Motors President Hiroshi Ito announced that the Japanese brand would unveil three electric models in 2022.
An ambitious plan, the news is part of Kawasaki’s previous statement that it plans to bring 10 electric and hybrid motorcycles by 2025. Clearly, Team Green isn’t waiting around to make good on that promise.
It’s not the sexiest news, but this week Kawasaki Heavy Industries made a rather large change to its corporate structure, spinning out its powersports and standalone motor business into a new company, Kawasaki Motors Ltd.
For KHI, its two-wheeled and motorsport endeavors are only a fraction of the company’s core business, and they serve more as a highlight and marketing call for what the Japanese conglomerate is capable of achieving in its large machine production facilities.
The supercharged Kawasaki H2 teasers continue to come from Team Green, though none since the “sound video” have really given anything away about the new sport bike. Today’s video, the fifth installment, doesn’t really whet our appetite either, though we thought we’d share it for one good reason, the Kawasaki River Mark logo.
There is something fundamental that motorcycle enthusiasts have to understand about the Japanese manufacturers, and that is the fact that their motorcycle business constitutes a very small portion of the companies’ overall operations and incomes.
Historically, the motorcycle divisions of the Big Four have been the epicenter for corporate bragging between these Japanese conglomerates — they told all of Japan, “look what we can do.”
In the case of Kawasaki, it is truly only a small part of Kawasaki Heavy Industries, which builds ships, heavy equipment, aerospace parts, trains, and even parts for nuclear power plants. There aren’t too many industries where Kawasaki doesn’t have an interest, and its motorcycle division is where it shows off its technological prowess…at least, that’s how it used to be.