All four Japanese motorcycle brands have agreed to a standard on swappable battery packs for two-wheelers, Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, and Yamaha are reporting.
The Swappable Battery Consortium for Electric Motorcycles is focused only on the Japanese market, and shouldn’t be confused with a similar agreement and effort that Honda and other brands (Yamaha, KTM, and Piaggio) agreed to earlier this year.
Innovation comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes, so it is interesting today to see some progress made on an often overlooked item: the motorcycle chain.
BMW Motorrad is touting the first maintenance-free chain ever for a motorcycle, calling the product the BMW M Endurance chain. In reality, the product is made by Regina, with BMW claiming first rights to the product and rebranding it.
The BMW M Endurance chains is similar to other X-ring chains in that it has a permanent lubricant filling between the rollers and pins, enclosed by X-rings.
What is completely new however is Regina’s design, in that it does not require additional external lubrication, nor does it require retensioning over time.
Here is an interesting concept that has us thinking about the future of transportation: inflatable vehicles.
It sounds strange to consider, but some students at the University of Tokyo have an intriguing proof of concept (dubbed POIMO), and the aerospace has already proven out these ideas further.
The concept is basic, the body of the vehicle (think: frame, bodywork, seat, etc) is actually an inflatable bag that when pumped with sufficient pressure, becomes a rigid structure.
The year is 2020, and at best, the climate control systems for motorcycles are rudimentary. Only a handful of motorcycle models come from the factory with heated grips or heated seats installed, but if you want to cool down, the options are even more scant.
The best bet for motorcyclists who want to cool down is to look to the apparel market, where vests made from freezer pack border on our best option…unless you want put a backpack sized A/C unit on your passenger seat, and run a hose into your jacket.
Thankfully, the eggheads at Indian Motorcycle have been thinking about this very issue, and have developed a pretty clever solution to tackle motorcycle air conditioning.
The question around electric motorcycles does not seem to be “if” they will come but “when” they will come, and from that comes a slew of other questions on how we are going to handle mainstream adoption of this budding two-wheeled segment.
From this momentum comes ideas on how best to charge electric vehicles, and we already see the great debate about the various charging standards available to manufacturers.
BMW Motorrad is tackling the issue was well, and patent applications show that the German brand has a very smart solution for how to charge motorcycles.
It was teased at the EICMA show in Milan, with the Japanese brand saying nary a word about the electric motorcycle chassis it had on display near the back of its booth.
Just one of the many surprises that were quietly shown to the public, this electric motorcycle showed a green steel tube frame, a modest battery pack, and what appeared to be mock engine cases.
Beyond those details, and the fact that this bike existed, there was not much else to say about the prototype, until now.
There has been no shortage of rumors about the “new” Honda CBR1000RR superbike. It is a story that pre-dates even the start of this publication, ever since Honda updated its liter bike offering for the 2008 model year.
And now, we seem finally set to see a new chapter in the Fireblade story, with the 2020 model year widely tipped to see the introduction of a new superbike from Big Red.
The machine has been rumored through movements in the WorldSBK Championship, the FIM Endurance World Championship, and other domestic series, and those stories have been supported by a series of patents found worldwide.
Now today, the eagle eyes of Ben Purvis at Cycle World have spotted another patent, one with an intriguing proposition – active aerodynamics.
For the 2020 model year, the standard for motorcycle interfaces will be rich-color TFT dashes, and this is not a new trend.
Sure, there will be a few “heritage” models that will employ analog gauges, but gone are the days of LCD dashes that share more with a Timex timepiece than the smartphone that is in every rider’s pocket.
I have no doubt that a few brands will still fail to get this memo, as there seems to be just about every year, but that number is shrinking rapidly. The motorcycle industry is slowly getting hip to this 21st century thing.
But now, we get word that some seemingly 22nd century tech is on its way, as German automotive parts supplier Bosch is touting the arrival of 3D dashboards for motor vehicles.
The day of the loud pipe is slowly coming to an end, and it is technology that is killing it. No, I am not talking about the rise of electric motorcycles. Instead, I am referring to noise enforcement cameras.
The idea is about to be tested in France, just outside the Paris Orly airport, and the concept is pretty simple. A calibrated microphone picks up when a vehicle has exceeded France’s noise limit for cars, trucks, and motorcycles, and then a connected camera takes a picture of the offending vehicle.
The license plate in the photo is then run through a police database, and within a short period of time, and ticket arrives at the offending party’s address – similar to how a speed camera system works.
It would seem that BMW Motorrad is the latest motorcycle marque to explore the idea of forced induction for motorcycles.
This means that the Bavarians will join the ranks of Kawasaki, which has already three supercharged H2 models on the market; as well as Honda and Suzuki, which have been toying with the idea of turbocharged two-wheelers on dealership floors.
Spotted by Ben Purvis at BikeSocial (he’s on a roll lately), the German brand has filed patents locally for an electric supercharger design, with drawings seemingly using the S1000RR as its basis (for whatever that is worth).