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Honda EV-Cub Concept Debuts, Yet Again

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We’re not really sure why Honda is debuting the EV-Cub concept again at the Tokyo Motor Show, but it is. Taking the iconic Honda Super Cub design, and adopting it to a new electric platform, Honda is making an obvious play with one of the “nicest” machines it ever created.

Unlike Big Red, we won’t rehash the idea again, other than to say just build it already, Honda – electric scooters make a lot of sense, especially in dense urban environments. The Honda Super Cub is the best selling motorcycle of all time, and we’re sure the EV-Cub will continue that heritage.

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MotoGP

Trackside Tuesday: Causing a Ruckus in Austin

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At last weekend’s Grand Prix of the Americas in Austin I achieved a landmark moment in my fledgling MotoGP career. Thanks to Melanie at Asphalt & Rubber, I was the proud recipient of a Honda Ruckus scooter and what a revelation it was!

The ability to get from point to point with ease was a joy although I did have one small mishap, of sorts. On race day I had decided to photograph the MotoGP race from the outside of the track.

I started at Turn 1 and worked my round to Turn 10. After spending a couple of laps at Turn 10, I returned to my scooter and realised I was missing one of my cameras.

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News

Ducati CEO Leaves the Door Open for a Scooter Model

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In a recent interview by Moto.it with Claudio Domenicali, the Ducati CEO fielded a number of questions about the Italian company’s business and its relationship with its German owners (read it here in Google English), but one question was of particular interest: a Ducati Scooter.

The often rumored, often debated, and often denied subject is perhaps the most feared topics for Ducatisti, and it ranks generally just below discussions on which oil to use, which tires are best, and how to break-in a motorcycle engine properly.

That being said, it seems we are headed for another round of debate, as Domenicali is quoted as saying the following to Moto.it: “a scooter marked Ducati is not blasphemy.”

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Bikes

Yamaha TMAX Comes to America for 2015

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It would be easy to dismiss the Yamaha TMAX as just another scooter being added to Yamaha USA’s 2015 lineup, but the two-wheeler is all the rage in Europe and Japan, where it serves the interests of young speed fiends and hardcore customizers alike.

Hoping to use that popularity to bring new riders into the Yamaha brand, Yamaha Motor is bringing the venerable TMAX to US soil for the first time…and we’re actually pretty excited about that (not that Yamaha will ever let A&R critique a bike at a press launch).

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News

US Motorcycle Industry Up 3.8% in 2014

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The Motorcycle Industry Council has tallied the numbers from 2014, and is happy to report that the US motorcycle industry grew 3.8% last year. Participating motorcycle manufacturers reported that 483,526 two-wheelers were sold in 2014, with growth across all sectors except in scooter sales.

The off-road segment sold particularly well, seeing an almost 11% gain over 2013’s numbers, with 81,013 units going thru dealership doors. Dual-sport sales were up 3.6% with 34,497 units sold, while on-road sales were up a modest 3%, for 334,488 units sold.

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News

Report: KTM Abandons Electric Scooter Project

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KTM seems to have a tumultuous relationship when it comes to electric vehicles. The Austrian company was the first OEM to announce an electric product, back in 2011.

Then in 2013, KTM CEO Stefan Pierer announced that the timing wasn’t right for electrics…and then promptly debuted the company’s E-Speed electric scooter, several days later.

KTM has since revamped its electric dirt bike program, showing three new Freeride E models at EICMA (MX, Enduro, and Supermoto).

So maybe then it’s without surprise that word is going around that KTM is canning its E-Speed project, ahead of its expected 2015 debut.

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News

Mahindra Building a Plant in Michigan for Electric Scooters

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Two wheeler division of Indian heavy industry conglomerate, Mahindra, plans on building $3000, 30-mph electric scooters for the North American market right in good ‘ol Michigan.

The scooter, called GenZe, will feature a luggage compartment, under-seat phone and laptop chargers, an LCD display that is essentially a smartphone instrument panel, and a potentially innovative seat that supports you in a sitting and standing position.

The GenZe website is actually pretty attractive, and Mahindra’s PR firm/team goes through great lengths to tell us why the GenZe is the solution for the ills of failing urban transportation infrastructure. Noticeably absent are any real specifications about the thing—like range, power, weight, etc.

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Bikes

Yamaha Tricity – A Three-Wheel Leaning Scooter with CVT

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Yamaha is trickling out its Thailand-built models, and while we wait for the debut of the Yamaha YZF-R25 250cc sport bike, the tuning fork brand has an interesting new scooter for the world market: the Yamaha Tricity.

A three-wheeled leaning scooter, the Yamaha Tricity features a 125cc motor with a continuously variable transmission (CVT). Designed to sell primarily in Thailand, the Tricity is a fairly premium and feature-packed scooter for that market, and Yamaha hopes to sell over 10,000 of them in Southeast Asia, Japan, and Europe.

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Bikes

Yamaha YZF-R25 Launch Outed by Website Metadata

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It is a brave new world when it comes to the internet and motorcycle companies, and I have no problem saying that Asphalt & Rubber has broken a number of stories simply because we bring a different set of skills to the table when it comes to sniffing out a lead: namely we’re a bunch of nerds, who spend far too much time with computers.

Motorcycle OEMs are still coming to grasp with this internet thing and how the opening of information has changed the landscape, and that is where Yamaha got itself into trouble today. Just hours ahead of their launch, we can confirm that Yamaha is ready to drop the Yamaha R25 250cc sport bike and the Yamaha Tricity three-wheel scooter.

This isn’t exactly new information — it has even been hotly tipped by a number of publications, including A&R — but where the information comes from certainly is: Yamaha’s website metadata.

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Bikes

Yamaha YZF-R3 and More to Debut Next Week?

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Yamaha has setup a teaser website, complete with countdown clock, for a new motorcycle(s) that should break cover next week. With just over eight days on the clock, at the time of this writing, we won’t have to wait long as we speculate to what Yamaha is brewing for us.

The general consensus so far is that we will see the Yamaha YZF-R25 and Yamaha YZF-R3 twin-cylinder sport bikes, which should come in either 250cc or 300cc formats, depending on which country we are talking about. Yamaha teased us with the YZR-R25 concept at the Tokyo Motor Show, and recent trademark filings in the United States and Europe have tipped off the YZF-R3 model.

From Yamaha’s teaser video we get a quick line drawing and head-on render of a sport bike, which looks very close to the R25 model we saw in Tokyo, which helps fuel the small-displacement sport bike fire further. Also seen in the video is some sort of urban maxi-scooter, along with its presumably accompanying engine. More details as we get it.

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News

BRD Working on an Affordable Electric Scooter?

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I was just in the BRD Motorcycles office the other day, and managed to get a glimpse of a near-production version of the startup’s RedShift supermoto/motocross platform. A more refined version of the prototype I rode in December 2011, though fundamentally and visually a very similar machine, we here at Asphalt & Rubber are eagerly awaiting the release of these lites-class bikes.

Unfortunately for my brief tour, the BRD team took away my phone, and gave me only vague responses to my questions about the RedShift in exchange. I can’t fault them on either account — the San Franciscan company doesn’t mess about with the “spy photo” nonsense, and would rather comment on realities, rather than push marketing hype.

CEO Marc Fenigstein did say that the company would have some announcements very soon though, which I would presume to be about additional company funding, which in turn leads to more concrete delivery dates of production bikes. Of course, time will tell on that.

However, one of those announcements might have been leaked out in one of the company’s job postings though: a cheap, powerful, affordable electric scooter for 2015.

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