As a member of the Nintendo-generation, nothing tickles my fancy more than to see an homage to some of the classics, and for motorcyclists is there any title more prolific than Excitebike? I think not. So it warms my gamer hearts to see that Red Bull has explored the idea of a real-life Excitebike course with its “straight rhythm” project. Red Bull says that the course is “an innovative evolution of supercross where a track is ‘unwound’ — there are no turns, just a half-mile-long straight rhythm section. By isolating the whoops, triples, doubles, table tops and step on/offs, riders must focus exclusively on reading the terrain directly in front of them, correctly judging their speed for precise distance and control.”
The off-road counterpart to Yamaha’s electric Yamaha PES1 concept street bike, the Yamaha PED1 concept is the second electric motorcycle concept that…
The Tokyo Motor Show is next week, and while we expect Honda to debut the Honda Gold Wing F6C at the show, it looks like Yamaha is set to make some waves as well. Teasing four concept motorcycles, two have caught our interest. First up is the Yamaha PES1 concept, which is an electric sport bike with a DC brushless motor and lithium-ion battery. Yamaha is light on details, and we can imagine that the concepts are meant more to illustrate that the tuning fork brand is “thinking about” electrics, as is the vogue with OEMs at the moment. However, the design is interesting, especially with Yamaha suggesting that the battery pack, called the Yamaha Smart Power Module, is swappable on the sub-100kg machine.
Having a test on the Monday after the last race of the season is a rather cruel punishment for the…
