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Ever since it was quietly made known that Ari Henning and Zack Courts, along with Spenser Robert, would be leaving the MotorTrend family, and their two-season-old show Throttle Out, we have been wondering where the trio would land…and now we know.

Announcing that they have joined the content and media team at Comoto (which was recently in the news for its acquisition of J&P Cycles), the move sees Courts, Henning, and Robert staying in Los Angeles and starting Comoto’s first West Coast office.

The Borg collective that is Comoto Holdings continues to assimilate large brands into its collective of retail enterprises for the motorcycle industry. No, not familiar with the name Comoto?

Surely though you have heard of – if not shopped at – the companies that Comoto controls, as it is the holding company for RevZilla and Cycle Gear, and it is also now the new business entity that owns J&P Cycles.

Last week when Yamaha debuted its electric street bike concept, the Yamaha PES1, we thought it looked like a well-though out concept machine that gave the tuning fork brand some street cred for thinking about a future with electric motorcycles. After all, the Japanese company was light on details, and certain parts of the bike seemed a bit more Star Trek than reality. Turns out we were wrong.

Releasing a video of the Yamaha PES1 testing on the track, it’s clear that the concept is fully-functional (just like Data), which means Yamaha has set its phasers to stun with this 100kg machine. From the cuts of this quick YouTube flick, Yamaha seems as serious as a Borg cube with its electric project, which only adds to the intrigue on when they could debut a proper production model.

Maybe with the rumors about Honda being behind the Mugen Shinden project, Yamaha didn’t want Big Red to get too far ahead in the EV game. Whatever the case may be, we like it…even more than Klingon gagh.

The Motorcycle Industry Council’s Business Advisory & Forecast group has issued a report that predicts a sales decline in the US new motorcycle market for 2012. The news comes fresh on the heels of the 0.3% gain that the motorcycle industry’s leading brands experienced in 2011 in the American market, and is the first time that the MIC has forecasted future new motorcycle sales for the United States.

Adding some validity to the report is the fact that the MIC, in conjunction with the Institute for Trend Research, accurately predicted 2011’s modest sales growth. This news is interesting to note, as it goes counter to news about the recovering economy and the increased national average gasoline price, both of which have been linked to previous bumps in volume for motorcycle sales.