Keeping to its bi-weekly schedule, Ducati’s next installment was not only on-time, but also in the wheelhouse of what we were expecting from the Italian brand in its 2022 model year debut.
Showing us its new Scrambler machines, the standout addition is the new Ducati Scrambler Urban Motard. If the bike looks familiar to you, it should.
We already had a pretty good idea what to expect from the 2022 KTM RC390, but that perhaps only whet our appetite for the pint-sized road bike.
Getting the full monty today, we can see explicitly what changes the Austrians have brought to the KTM RC390, which will debut in the United States in March 2022.
The wait is finally, finally over. The third generation Suzuki Hayabusa is now out in the wild, officially, and that means we can talk about every detail of this iconic hyperbike. Don’t worry, it will be a short conversation.
Despite calling it an “all new” motorcycle (Suzuki claims over 500 parts have been changed), there are only a handful of items that are truly new about the 2022 Suzuki Hayabusa.
The chassis is very much the same, with a few tweaks here and there, and the 1,340cc inline-four engine gets an update to make it compatible with emission standards around the world, but it is still certainly a refresh of the current design.
We should say, there is a full suite of electronics to get excited about, and as you can tell from the photo above, Suzuki have given the Hayabusa a serious makeover, with the help of the company’s wind tunnel and CFD work. So, let’s get on with it.
It has been just about two months since we first got wind that Zero Motorcycles was bringing a new model to market.
Dubbed the Zero SR/F, we could make a joke about how adding an “F” to the name stands for “Finally” as Zero made a protracted teaser campaign for the new motorcycle, but you could make a similar remark on the progress the bike makes for Zero’s fleet.
As our Bothan spies predicted, cornering ABS is standard on the bike at its two trim levels, and power comes in at a reasonable 110hp and a bone-crushing 140 lbs•ft of torque, thanks to the new Z-Force 75-10 motor. With a 12.6 kWh (nominal) battery pack, the Zero SR/F is rated for 109 miles of mixed riding use (161 miles city, 82 miles highway at 70 mph).
The real beauty of the Zero SR/F though, and we are not talking the new body styling, is the bike’s fast recharge time. With modular charging units that come in 3kW, 6kW, 9kW, and 12kW capabilities, the onboard Level 2 charger can top off the bike in 90 minutes (95% in an hour) in the 12kW configuration.
We still have over a month before Zero Motorcycles is going to take the wraps off its latest motorcycle, but the teaser is out, and our Bothan spy insiders have been hard at work uncovering more information about the machine.
As such, we have a bevy of details that have leaked out from the Californian electric motorcycle company, and so far, we like what we hear.
This because if our sources are correct, the Zero SR/F is set to be quite the looker, and it will have the technical specifications to back it up.
I once had a conversation with Ducati CEO Claudio Domenicali, where he described that in terms of safety advancement, cornering ABS was to the front wheel what traction control was to the rear wheel.
A few years later now, we see that the Italian brand is taking cornering ABS very seriously, and during the company’s EICMA unveiling event, Domenicali announced that Ducati is making cornering ABS a standard item on all of its 2019 model year motorcycles.
They did it. They actually did it. Debuting today at INTERMOT, the Indian Motorcycle brand released its newest motorcycle, the 2019 Indian FTR1200.
The only production street tracker currently available on the market, the Indian FTR1200 takes its inspiration from the Indian FTR750 Scout race bike that is dominating the American Flat Track series, and in the process brings the company’s first non-cruiser motorcycle to market.
Answering the calls of many, the FTR1200 production bike is visually very close to the FTR1200 Concept we saw several months back, and it will come in two flavors: the base model Indian FTR1200, and the up-spec Indian FTR1200 S. Expect it to drop, Q1 2019.
Sometimes, it seems like motorcycle manufacturers are intentionally tanking the supersport segment. For proof of this, I look at the electronics available, on this supposedly cutting-edge segment.
Something as ubiquitous as traction control is still slow to come to the supersport space, while it remains a standard feature on virtually every new street bike model. The concept is so foreign in this segment that less than half of the available supersports on the market have a traction control option.
One of those brands is MV Agusta, which was the first motorcycle marque to bring TC to the supersport class. Now, the Italian brand is ready to raise the bar another notch further, bringing the power of an inertial measurement unit (IMU) to supersport riders.
Cornering ABS, it’s the hot new thing on motorcycles rights now. So important is this braking technology, one industry CEO explained it to me in the following terms: in terms of safety, it does to the front wheel what traction control has done for the rear wheel.
I won’t make the bold statement that IMU-powered (that’s inertial measurement units for the uninitiated) braking systems make it impossible to tuck the front wheel of a motorcycle, but they do make it exceedingly difficult to do so, especially by use of the brakes.
Not surprisingly then, we see a number of motorcycle brands offering this technology now, usually on their more premium models. KTM was the first do so, getting an exclusive from Bosch, one of the leaders in this space.
Since then though, cornering ABS has come to virtually every brand (strangely, none of the American motorcycle brands offer a motorcycle with cornering ABS right now), and we see several players offering systems to these OEMs, with Bosch and Continental leading the pack.
We are rapidly coming to the conclusion that the new KTM 790 Duke is the bike of this year’s EICMA show.
Making a potent 105hp from its 799cc parallel-twin engine, packed into a 418 lbs (wet)steel trellis body, the 2018 KTM 790 Duke brings a host of features to the middleweight sport bike category.
In typical KTM fashion, the 790 Duke left no angle behind in its high school honors geometry course, and the LED headlight builds upon the common design features that KTM has been putting together on its street-going machines.
Not quite the vision that was the KTM 790 Duke prototype, the production model still evokes the same emotions, and is handsome in its own right – allaying our fears when seeing spy shots of the machine.
Adding a TFT dash, IMU-powered traction control, cornering ABS, launch control, and an up-and-down quickshifter are all strong moves from the “Ready to Race” brand, making the KTM 790 Duke have not only the best power-to-weight ratio in its class, but it is also one of the most feature-packed.