- 5 days ago
Hybrid power can bring the best of electric and combustion power together, but does it make sense for motorcycles? Benda recently showed a hybrid prototype and Kawasaki has already taken the plunge. Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer discuss hybrid power, including diesel electric trains and a Canadian company doing similar work on semi-trucks and a diesel hybrid pickup truck to retrofit your full-size bike hauler. Hop on and ride with us!
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SportsTranscript
00:00:00Welcome to the Cycle World Podcast. We hope you're back. If you're new, double welcome.
00:00:06I'm Mark Hoyer, I'm the Editor-in-Chief. I'm with Kevin Cameron, our Technical Editor.
00:00:13He's seen a few things and he's thought about it more.
00:00:17This week's topic is pretty straightforward. The question is, are hybrid motorcycles dumb?
00:00:25That's a good question for you.
00:00:26It is a good question. And the reason we're bringing this up is that at EICMA, this Chinese company called Benda,
00:00:33who's been doing some interesting things as if they're possibly partly independent from the market.
00:00:42I don't know. Their designs are unusual and interesting, but they have some regular cruisers and they're apparently getting into snowmobiles, all this.
00:00:51But what they showed was a 250cc flat twin with a hybrid powertrain.
00:00:58So it had an electric motor, flat twin, you know, little cylinder wings out like your BMWs or your Douglas's, you know, if you're one of those older folks or your Velocet Valiant.
00:01:09Is that a drink? I don't know.
00:01:10Go ahead and try. Velocet Valiant, you know, they had a little flat twin.
00:01:16Lovely little design.
00:01:17So here's their bike and it's, you know, the swing arm's unusual.
00:01:21The rear axle area is like three to four inches in diameter where the rear axle carriers, there's a lot of interesting stuff going on.
00:01:30But technically, the question is, why are they making a hybrid?
00:01:35Does that make sense for motorcycles?
00:01:37Does it make sense to put two powertrains in and build this motorcycle?
00:01:43We've joked in the past, like, I have a Honda EU 2200i generator.
00:01:49It's whisper quiet.
00:01:50It weighs 50 pounds.
00:01:51We were going to make a backpack and put it on our test rider and then try to make a hybrid zero and just wear the backpack.
00:02:00We were even going to do it just for photos and have an extension cord going into the bike.
00:02:04It couldn't charge and roll as far as I know.
00:02:07I don't think it could make power while it's charging the battery.
00:02:11But, you know, it was a charming thought for the day.
00:02:16Yeah.
00:02:17So, yeah, Kevin, what do we do about this?
00:02:22Well, first of all, the inspiration for this comes from hybrid automobiles, which are not dumb.
00:02:30Hybrid automobiles address one of the many shortcomings of the internal combustion engine,
00:02:36which is that its fuel consumption curve of load versus RPM is bucket shaped, is U-shaped.
00:02:49It's fuel consumption is high at low throttle.
00:02:55It's at a minimum in sort of the mid range.
00:03:00And as RPM rises, so does friction.
00:03:03So you have to burn extra fuel to overcome that friction.
00:03:06So fuel consumption in terms of pounds of fuel per horsepower per hour increases.
00:03:14And at the low end, it's a pumping loss, right?
00:03:17Yes, pumping loss because the throttle is open very slightly.
00:03:22Yeah.
00:03:22And this effect is what Charles Lindbergh taught U.S. pilots in World War II.
00:03:33If you are worried that you're not going to make base on return, run your engine at the largest possible throttle setting at low RPM and with propeller pitch to suit.
00:03:49So that you're basically on a very high gear ratio, like you are in a car to pull the RPM down.
00:03:56It's like overdrive.
00:03:57Overdrive pulls engine RPM down.
00:04:00It extends range because lower RPM translates to less friction.
00:04:06So in a car, there are laws requiring cars to improve their fuel consumption.
00:04:14And of course, this dates back originally to the days when we were importing vast amounts of oil from Saudi Arabia.
00:04:21Today, the U.S. supposedly is a net exporter of petroleum.
00:04:25So that no longer applies.
00:04:28Today, we're worried about burning fuel because it puts carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.
00:04:35There are many cars here in the U.S.
00:04:38There are some 280 million cars that are registered.
00:04:43I'm not talking about those that are sitting in piles waiting to become import cars.
00:04:50But it makes sense to build a hybrid automobile if you're concerned about range and about reducing fuel consumption because a hybrid auto can do both.
00:05:05I've noticed with my little Korean import that I get over 40 miles per gallon on the interstate.
00:05:16But driving two-lane roads, I get between 26 and 32.
00:05:21So even though the speed is lower, the fuel consumption is higher because I'm in the rising parts of the fuel consumption curve.
00:05:33And so what a hybrid does is it cuts in the electric motor and battery to drive the car when the internal combustion engine would be operating at low throttle, low speed.
00:05:50And this makes perfect sense because if you're moving through the supermarket parking lot and trying to not bump into anything.
00:06:05It makes sense to have electric power because the internal combustion engine would be burning fuel to overcome its pumping loss.
00:06:15So because cars are so numerous, because they use a significant amount of fuel, and because there are laws motivating auto manufacturers to reduce fuel consumption, hybrids make excellent sense as automobiles.
00:06:33On the other hand, there are no such laws pushing motorcycles to reduce their fuel consumption because motorcycles are much less numerous than cars, and each motorcycle tends to use less, not in every case, but in many cases less than an automobile.
00:06:56So why would Benda build this machine?
00:07:03Well, a lot of what goes to EICMA these days, when nobody knows where to stack their chips on today's playing board.
00:07:12Yes, indeed.
00:07:14It makes better sense to show prototypes.
00:07:20And that's what we have here.
00:07:23The little flat twin is 250 cc's.
00:07:28It's what, 53 and a half by 55 millimeters, and makes 25 horsepower and 25.5 newton meters of torque.
00:07:40So it moves right along, but it's basically a potputt.
00:07:45It's a utility motorcycle.
00:07:47Then you add an electric motor, which in some photographs is hanging underneath the engine, pointing forward, and some other places it shows it actually on the crankshaft and so forth.
00:08:01There are a lot of ways to do this.
00:08:04Concentric drive is, it makes sense, because then you have the engine's crankshaft, the electric motor, which is also the starter, which is also the generator.
00:08:13Yeah, that's a feature of the Honda Goldwing, not that they're using it as a hybrid, but the charging system and the starter is one, and it's concentric to the crank.
00:08:23And so when you start it, man, it's amazing.
00:08:27It's not like, it's not throwing a gear on a flywheel and going, it just goes bang, because it's just right there.
00:08:36And it just hucks the motor around, and it lights up, and then it starts to be, you know, it's generating function.
00:08:41And it would be not a big extension to say, enlarge this and get a bigger battery, and then suddenly you have a hybrid Goldwing.
00:08:51Now, they claim the weight of this Benda 250 is 392 pounds.
00:08:58That means that the battery is really quite small.
00:09:02It might weigh 15 pounds.
00:09:04It might weigh a little more.
00:09:05I'm not sure, because there is some extra weight associated with building a hybrid.
00:09:10In an automobile, which is a living room suite on wheels with one or more engine motors to drive it, weight is a smaller consideration.
00:09:22And particularly for the non-enthusiast, the weight is not, you know, when you have a person buying an electric car who doesn't, they don't think about their vehicle in the way that an enthusiast thinks about their vehicle.
00:09:36Well, they get into a 5,000-pound, 6,000-pound electric vehicle, or take the Hummer, which weighed 10,000 pounds, electric, full electric Hummer, 10,000 pounds.
00:09:47Is this how we're saving the world?
00:09:50But people don't notice, and you can make the whole bottom of the car just a giant pack of batteries.
00:09:54And that's, you know, our challenge with the motorcycle is we can't have an 800-pound.
00:09:58We can, but we don't want an 800-pound battery motorcycle.
00:10:03We get up to about 550, and you start to really feel it, you know.
00:10:09No question.
00:10:10When you're picking up an electric motorcycle.
00:10:13So as a prototype, I think the Benda 250 is very interesting, because I have wondered for a long time whether a gasoline electric drive would make some kind of sense in certain applications.
00:10:33By this, I mean, the electric motor only drives the wheels.
00:10:40The gasoline or diesel engine drives the generator.
00:10:45And this is how American diesel locomotives operate.
00:10:50The engine just sits there running at a constant speed that is safe for its long, whippy crankshaft.
00:10:55And the motor man up in the cab, the engineer moves the throttle to accelerate the train.
00:11:07And current is sent to the traction motors under the locomotive, and it moves off with ponderous grace.
00:11:16Right, and the generator's designed to run at an optimal RPM and load.
00:11:21Yeah.
00:11:22And so it's going to make its maximum amount of charging when it needs to do that, and when it doesn't, it doesn't.
00:11:28Back when diesel submarines were the rule, there were a lot of crankshaft failures, because they coupled the diesel directly to the propeller for surface operation.
00:11:41And to make the engine small and light enough to fit inside of a submarine's hull, it ended up with a crankshaft that had some torsional problems.
00:11:53So they broke a lot of crankshafts, because the officers who were promoted to be submarine captains were not, perhaps, constantly thinking about, is this a safe speed for my crankshaft?
00:12:08Let me look it up.
00:12:10And so they switched to diesel electric drive for that reason.
00:12:15The engine was coupled to generator, not to the propeller.
00:12:20Only the electric motor is connected to the propeller.
00:12:23Well, you know, consider the varying loads and, you know, on a propeller and cavitation and waves and all that confusing business.
00:12:32And then you've got a captain who has no mechanical sympathy.
00:12:35You know, it's like a pilot who doesn't understand how the plane works.
00:12:39You know, there's plenty of them, I'm sure.
00:12:41But how much better a pilot would you be if you understood all the systems of your aircraft as much as you could?
00:12:48Yep.
00:12:49Makes a difference.
00:12:50So shame on you, Captain Submarine Crankshaft Breaker.
00:12:56There were quite a few of them.
00:12:58But diesel electric drive has been routine for 100 years.
00:13:04Well, nearly for submarines.
00:13:06And certainly close to that for locomotives, rail locomotives.
00:13:14I mean, when did the last steam locomotive just stop puffing along?
00:13:18I mean, a diesel electric just would have been a massive improvement.
00:13:22Oh, in fuel consumption and everything else.
00:13:24And also, you didn't have to stop every little whip stitch to get another tank of water because the steam exhaust from the cylinders was used to drive the draft through the fire.
00:13:36It wasn't it wasn't it wasn't sent to a condenser and then pumped as water back into the boiler.
00:13:44Right.
00:13:44Which is the way that that some closed systems do operate.
00:13:48Oh, sure.
00:13:48Yeah.
00:13:49Probably put some beautifully pure water in there that is not non corrosive and doesn't have nasty minerals building up on things.
00:13:58Here's another thing that can be an advantage in the case of a hybrid, particularly if it's designed for it, is that the internal combustion engine and the electric motor can cooperate.
00:14:09So if the IC engine makes 80 horsepower and the electric motor has a momentary, that is before it overheats, burst power of 200 horsepower, you could have very spirited acceleration one or two times.
00:14:26And then the engine would have to charge the battery back up because the battery can't, you know, you can't carry two completely different power systems.
00:14:36If you're doing a hybrid, you've got a moderate sized battery in a Prius.
00:14:40I think it weighs 150 pounds and you can't go far on it as battery alone.
00:14:48But in a Tesla, the battery might weigh, what is it?
00:14:5211, 1200 pounds for the 88 kilowatt hour.
00:14:56And it's actually the it's built as a tray.
00:15:00It's part of the frame.
00:15:01Um, so the excitement factor could be a plus for a hybrid in that, that little 25 horsepower motor, chuck, chuck, chuck, chuck, chuck, chuck, chuck.
00:15:14Suddenly a mighty hum is heard and the thing shoots forward.
00:15:19And the fellow on the 20 year old sportster is embarrassed.
00:15:23Um, this is a goal for some of us.
00:15:26Um, but I think what Benda are doing here is they built it for their own instruction and they built it to see what the market response would be, both of which are well worth doing.
00:15:40And I keep thinking about an electric drive motor for a MotoGP bike, because it is not a trivial thing to match the torque from an internal combustion engine to the grip available from a rear tire that whose, whose camber angle is constantly changing.
00:16:07And track conditions are changing and all these different things are changing.
00:16:12Well, RPM is, RPM is constantly changing.
00:16:15And yes, let's talk about how elastic, I mean, you're, when you're trying to control rear wheel slip, because what are you asking for at the throttle is the rider.
00:16:26You're saying, I need this amount of torque.
00:16:29I need this torque.
00:16:30If I'm coming, you know, if I'm driving off the corner on a, on an M 1000 double R and all of my contraction control and everything is turned on and I'm ready to, ready to go.
00:16:41And I pull that trigger.
00:16:42I'm going, I need the most and I need some slip, but not too much slip.
00:16:47And to do that manually, you've got to get a lot to have a hocus pocus in your wrist and you need a torque curve, a natural power torque curve that is predictable for my human brain.
00:16:57And with MotoGP, what are they doing?
00:17:01They're fluttering the throttle butterfly.
00:17:04They're altering the spark for sure.
00:17:07They have the spark timing.
00:17:08Yeah.
00:17:09Spark timing.
00:17:10They're doing all of these things to artificially smooth out this, whatever their 200 and beyond horsepower outputs are and the torque rating and giving the rider what they want.
00:17:23And what Kevin's explaining is it's, if it's an electric motor, it is a rheostat.
00:17:28That's it.
00:17:29You just, you want traction control.
00:17:32Like it's just a little bit of some code.
00:17:34Well, I have it for you.
00:17:36Right.
00:17:37It doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be.
00:17:39I asked this, I'm reading the tire.
00:17:42What's my camber angle.
00:17:44What's the traction on the track?
00:17:45Like all this hocus pocus that has to happen in between that in milliseconds and then go to control the engine and then try to trace this perfect torque line.
00:17:55So if it magically became possible for an engine coupled to a generator to be supplying the battery or the battery and the traction motor, it sounds heavy to me.
00:18:11Sounds like, no, probably not a good idea.
00:18:13But conceptually, the idea of, of supply, of modulating motor torque to suit traction conditions, I think it would be much easier to do electrically.
00:18:27Well, think about.
00:18:28Because the basis of an electric motor is, is pretty linear.
00:18:31Well, imagine having a small, a small enough electric motor and a small enough battery so that when you are entering a corner, you're on electric and you're essentially kind of decoupling the engine braking, right?
00:18:45And maybe you're getting a little bit of engine braking to, to charge.
00:18:48I don't know if you need that, but what I'm getting at is a small enough motor so that when you're in the corner and you're modulating the throttle for that perfect amount of edge grip.
00:18:58Yep.
00:18:58The electric motor is acting perfectly and the, and the big guy is going down.
00:19:03And then as you roll in, it's electric motor and then you pick up and then light the fire on your V4 and, and smoke the tire and charge the battery and get ready for the next corner.
00:19:13Be gone.
00:19:14Yes.
00:19:16So it's, a lot depends on what you would expect from a hybrid motorcycle.
00:19:22I think, I think, I think Yamaha's, Yamaha's calling and they want to patent my idea for electric corner exit control.
00:19:29Yeah.
00:19:30Excellent.
00:19:31Yes.
00:19:32Oh, sure.
00:19:35I'll, uh, see if I can get residuals on that.
00:19:38Now, um, uh, hybrid drive would make sense if motorcycle fuel consumption, uh, came under government restriction.
00:19:51That's one thing.
00:19:52If, if gasoline became $12 a gallon, as it is in some parts of the world, uh, we would, we'd be making a different law for the use of fuel.
00:20:05That's one case.
00:20:06Uh, in another case, uh, in another case, the presence of the electric motor adds, uh, zest to a pedestrian 25 horsepower putt putt around town and makes it more fun to ride.
00:20:19That would be good.
00:20:21Um, and these are, uh, uh, the combination of an electric motor slash generator,
00:20:31which is either adding or subtracting torque from the constantly varying torque of an internal combustion engine.
00:20:38As the RPM rises, for example, you will get an increasing torque from the fact that the intake valves are kept open after bottom center.
00:20:49Oh, now the air box is chiming in.
00:20:52We're going to have 500 RPM of pretty good little bump here in the torque.
00:20:56And now here's the length of the intake that's chiming in and we have the exhaust pumping.
00:21:01These things have to be added up in such a way that it gives us usable, uh, safe to apply torque that doesn't have a sudden, uh, spike in the middle of it that sends you into the gravel.
00:21:17So I like the controllability of the electric motor.
00:21:21There are a lot of ways that it could be applied that could be called hybrids.
00:21:26Um, well, after dynoing, um, many, many, many motorcycles and looking at many, many dyno charts on our in-house dynojet 250i dynamometer, um, I have to shout out to Honda for, I mean, what are we trying to do with an internal combustion engine, but replicate the torque of an electric motor?
00:21:48Like that's what we're looking for on most street bikes, especially now with emissions controls and a lot of the parallel twins and, you know, that kind of Euro five plus idea of not too much overlap, but open up the valves quick and, and all that.
00:22:03Honda does a really great job kind of across the board.
00:22:06The 300 L dual sport bike, just a really nice tour.
00:22:13Everything that you go through when you dyno Honda, somebody spent a lot of time matching what you just described resonance in the airbox and the length of the tailpipe and the header pipe.
00:22:23Because these are all RPM or throttle angle dependent effects.
00:22:27So you, you want, if you're going to add them together, you don't want to add them up to a spike.
00:22:32That's going to make you, uh, make the back end slide out when you, you thought, I thought I was just feeding power smoothly.
00:22:40And then I saw the pavement.
00:22:43So nicely done.
00:22:45Um, yeah, so it's, you know, it's nice to see that and, and think of, I think about the bend of 25 horsepower and that flat twin.
00:22:54And I think, well, what if we just didn't lug around the battery and the electric motor, what kind of mileage would we get?
00:23:02You know, I mean, uh, a Honda trail one 25, you know, we got a 55 mile with my, my ass on it.
00:23:08It's a 55 mile an hour bike, but it will return in real riding with me on it is 112 miles per gallon.
00:23:16That's pretty darn good.
00:23:18And it's fun.
00:23:18I mean, it's not, it's not, it's not roll into it fun, like sportster fun or whatever, but it's, it is good.
00:23:24It's good times and, um, in its own way.
00:23:26And I think about a 25 horsepower flat twin, 380 pounds, that wouldn't be bad.
00:23:32I mean, I think it would have some pep and if you tuned it for it, but you're still going to get, you know, I mean, it's, you're going to get 80 miles per gallon pretty easily.
00:23:39I mean, my WR250R Yamaha in its factory form, I have to beat on it.
00:23:45I mean, this is before I tuned it and put a pipe and stuff, but when it was factory factory, I'd have to beat on it to get it to get less than 60 miles per gallon.
00:23:55So you're looking, if you, uh, mildly tuned flat twin street bikes, 80 miles per gallon, I think you'd have no problem adding hybrid.
00:24:03Then what would we do?
00:24:04I can't imagine.
00:24:05We, well, this is another, let's look at another approach.
00:24:09Uh, if we imagine a draconian regime in Washington, DC, that says the most important thing in the world is not to burn anything.
00:24:19So you want to roast marshmallows.
00:24:22You're going to have to use solar power, sunshine.
00:24:25Um, in this case, the first thing that we would do would be to provide a, an overdrive ratio for a lot of more powerful motorcycles.
00:24:34So that instead of humming down the road on your, uh, 600 four cylinder at 8,000 RPM, you're humming at 5,000 RPM.
00:24:44You'd have to recam it.
00:24:45You'd have to give it a more Euro five, uh, torque curve for this, but by pulling back from higher RPM, you would be sliding down.
00:24:55From the high fuel consumption at higher RPM in our U shaped curve down toward the bottom where the minimum is.
00:25:03So the first thing to do is to reduce engine RPM at cruise.
00:25:09And, uh, what they've done with cars to improve fuel consumption is to make them lighter because so much car travel consists of, oh, the light screen.
00:25:22Oh, now I have to put on the brakes, sit there, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, and heavy car is going to take more, uh, torque and more power to get it moving after the light turn screen.
00:25:38And of course you have to stop looking at your phone, um, which adds another delay.
00:25:43I think they should have that as a drag racing class that you're conducting a phone call and the tree is coming down.
00:25:50They actually design phone delay into timing of lights now for traffic.
00:25:56I would believe it.
00:25:57And boy, is, is that frustrating?
00:26:00Particularly if you're on a motorcycle, because you're not really looking at your phone.
00:26:04You can put your, you can mount your phone on your handlebars and you can look at it, but it's, and there's plenty of guys, like I was in India and I'm watching guys riding in India with really loose fitting helmets.
00:26:14And the guy had his hand up inside of his helmet, holding his phone, talking while he's riding in Indian traffic, which is, that is a feat of bravery and skill.
00:26:26I mean, Indian traffic is something else.
00:26:30It's really something else where the horn is a wear item.
00:26:33Yes.
00:26:34So in any case, so, uh, there are a lot of things that we would do initially before we adopted a hybrid.
00:26:43I think we could improve cruising fuel consumption quite a lot with an overdrive ratio.
00:26:50Um, not so hard to do.
00:26:53Um, it provided that you built, you're designing it into the next model rather than having to try to fit it into an existing transmission case, but that would be number one.
00:27:06Um, other things that, um, the pumping loss thing.
00:27:14It's a great thing about diesels is that they operate on full throttle all the time.
00:27:18And the air intake air is not throttled on a diesel.
00:27:21So they don't have that.
00:27:22Yeah.
00:27:23Talk or just explain the, the way they control the way the engine runs on a diesel for, for folks who are not familiar with that.
00:27:29Yeah.
00:27:29What happens is it takes in a lung full of air and it compresses it roughly 16, 17 to one.
00:27:39The air is hot.
00:27:40Uh, a diesel injector sprays fuel in typically in, in six directions, um, radially, the combustion chamber is in the piston.
00:27:54There's a bowl in the piston and the air in there is rotating.
00:27:59So the spray comes out in three, um, installments.
00:28:05There's a first one to get it lit.
00:28:09It sprays in.
00:28:10It takes a moment for the droplets to warm up to the point that they burn.
00:28:15They're warming up from the heat of the compressed air.
00:28:18There's no spark plug.
00:28:19The glow plug is there.
00:28:21Well, that's for cold starting.
00:28:22Yeah.
00:28:23And then, uh, once there's flame in the cylinder, they inject the first, uh, power injection, which, um, then they go one, two, three with those injections.
00:28:36And during that time, the air in the, in the bowl has rotated.
00:28:40So they're squirting fuel.
00:28:42They're trying to parcel out the fuel so that there is no, um, underserved area and in the, in the intake air.
00:28:53So it is called compression ignition or CI because the fuel is ignited by contact with air heated, compressed so much that it's very hot.
00:29:05And because there is, uh, no throttling, the pressure, um, during intake on top of the piston and below it is roughly the same.
00:29:18So no loss, very little.
00:29:21Yeah.
00:29:21So you're controlling the power output by how much fuel you're putting in the cylinder.
00:29:25Yes.
00:29:26It's a variable, uh, delivery pump.
00:29:29Modern type, uh, is a, not a spray that is turned on either by a solenoid or by a, um, piezoelectric crystal.
00:29:40And it opens fully.
00:29:44There's no partially open.
00:29:45It opens and then the computer counts off time.
00:29:48And then it's up.
00:29:50That's enough.
00:29:50Stop.
00:29:51And it stops injecting.
00:29:53That's how, uh, load control is accomplished in a diesel.
00:29:58And, uh, which is very different from spark ignition in which we have some means of mixing air and fuel together before they enter the cylinder or shortly after, uh, they're entered the cylinder in the direct injection engines.
00:30:16These are spark ignition engines.
00:30:18There's no flame until the exhaust, the valves are closed.
00:30:23And, uh, it's time for, uh, the spark, which is usually somewhere around 35 degrees before top center.
00:30:31It takes a while for the pressure to rise so that the fact that the spark is occurring before top dead center doesn't result in a large energy loss because the little flame kernel is, is growing like a business startup.
00:30:45It doesn't have, it doesn't have, it doesn't have its elbows out yet.
00:30:49So there's not a lot of pressure rise by top dead center.
00:30:52And then you hope to get peak pressure, uh, 10 or 10 to 12 degrees after top dead center.
00:30:58And then you let that burned high pressure gas expand against the piston doing work on the crankshaft.
00:31:06Right.
00:31:06And the efficiency of taking, you know, if you take your Honda Goldwing of 1800 CC, you've got a vast, uh, surplus of power available to you.
00:31:17So when you're whispering down the highway, you are working against pumping loss because the engine is not particularly loaded when you shrink it down to a 125 CC single, like in the trail, you're at wide open throttle almost all the time.
00:31:33It's life on a dyno.
00:31:34You're just really trying to zing along and, uh, vintage cars.
00:31:38I think back to my MG Magnet, you know, 1958 ZB Veritone had a 1500 CC, uh, um, MG BMC engine, twin little carburetors.
00:31:52And it was life on a dyno, but that car got exceptionally good fuel mileage because it was designed to use a lot of throttle.
00:31:59It was sized so that the butterflies were open and it was designed to be efficient doing that.
00:32:05And this is why you will find that so many cars now being made have between eight and 11 transmission speeds, because what they're trying to do is they're trying to keep the, the engine speed at a value that will require the throttle to be fairly far open.
00:32:26So in effect, it is controlled lugging the way my mother instinctively drove cars dates back to 1920, but, uh, what they're doing with those, uh, with all those extra transmission speeds is they're trying to look to keep the engine operating at a close to its best specific fuel consumption.
00:32:53And that is pounds per horsepower per hour.
00:32:56Now I was told sitting in the office of Claudio Domenicali, presently CEO of Ducati.
00:33:04He said the ratio between the, the smallest fuel consumption of which a given engine is capable and the largest at which it might operate.
00:33:16It's two and a half is two and a half to one, which is why I'm getting good, better mileage on the highway at 75 miles an hour.
00:33:26Then I am around two lane roads in my rural area, uh, on partial throttle.
00:33:37And this is, this is something that could perfectly well work for motorcycles, which is why you would have an overdrive ratio.
00:33:45So to reduce engine RPM at cruise.
00:33:50The other thing of course, is that you would have to come go to a psychology center to have your mind reprogrammed so that you didn't enjoy fun anymore and would stop that constant acceleration.
00:34:02What's the point of it?
00:34:04Just move with the flow like a good citizen.
00:34:07Oh, it feels so good.
00:34:09Just having the right amount of torque on tap in the right gear.
00:34:13You're 74 Norton Commando.
00:34:16Beautiful combustion chamber.
00:34:18Nice pair of twin, twin, uh, AMO premieres.
00:34:22Decent cooling.
00:34:23Decent cooling.
00:34:24Of the cylinder head.
00:34:24Yep.
00:34:25Yep.
00:34:25Spark.
00:34:28Nice electronic ignition with a great ignition curve.
00:34:30And then you just roll in the third gear and it pulls and it's not, it's not Titanic amounts of torque, but it's a very nice amount of torque and it surges you ahead.
00:34:41Even, even the old XS 650, you know, you can short, I just short shift that thing and blah, blah, blah.
00:34:47And I kind of rattle along and, you know, it vibrates a lot if you rev it up, but also.
00:34:52How many treatments have you had?
00:34:55Zero.
00:34:56I'm negative treatments.
00:34:58Yeah.
00:34:59But it feels good.
00:35:00You roll in on, on the XS and it starts to pep up, man.
00:35:03It really comes in strong and it makes a bark and you enjoy it.
00:35:05But I've been imprinted with that my entire life, you know?
00:35:08Now, I want to say something about my own obsolescence.
00:35:13When Harley Davidson designed the Pan America, I was filled with admiration because this was a departure.
00:35:25They were designing a different kind of engine for an application with which they were not familiar traditionally.
00:35:36And this is, this is an engine that has received wide praise.
00:35:41But they designed the engine to look like a boom box.
00:35:47Now, presumably one side of the engine is, has the cam chains and they are, the cam chain covers or whatever they are, what's between, what keeps us from seeing the cam chains.
00:36:03It's got a convoluted shape, which has nothing whatever to do with what's inside.
00:36:09Now, that used to be important to me.
00:36:12The point is, my obsolescence prevents me from appreciating the question, why shouldn't the cam cover look like a boom box?
00:36:23Nobody knows what a cam chain is anymore, and they don't need to.
00:36:29So, here I am with my outworn aesthetic, hoping that engines can still be designed to look like aluminum shrink-wrapped onto the fascinating parts inside.
00:36:44Forget that stuff.
00:36:45That's just nonsense, because Honda has put a single-sided swing arm on a battery-operated motorcycle.
00:36:54Now, are they going to enter it in 24-hour races, which is why the single-sided swing arm was first invented?
00:37:00So, you could change the rear wheel several times in 24 hours because you'd worn the tires down so much?
00:37:08No, because a single-sided swing arm has become a phoneme in the silent language of styling.
00:37:18Oh, we'll hit them with this, and we'll combine it with that, and it's sort of like modern architecture.
00:37:24Well, why shouldn't doors be parallelograms that are canted off?
00:37:30You just have to walk through them at an angle.
00:37:34I can't think of a reason.
00:37:36Can you?
00:37:36Why we shouldn't walk around like 1920s comedy heroes?
00:37:43Well, in the murderous onslaught of social media, I recently saw a short video on architecture of this designed house somewhere.
00:37:53I wish I could remember, but social media has melted my brain.
00:37:57But it's a very tall door.
00:38:01It's a door that's, you know, 15 feet or something.
00:38:05And the person, the door is closed, and the person opens the door, and the door is segmented.
00:38:11And as you pull it open, it waves open.
00:38:14Each segment follows the last.
00:38:19Aesthetically, it's gorgeous.
00:38:21It's nonsense.
00:38:23But design matters, you know?
00:38:24It makes you feel good.
00:38:25I think using the CF Moto, the RR, their kind of supposed MotoGP replica for the street, super bike thing that they showed it.
00:38:36CF Moto, there they are, China.
00:38:38It's Kiska design.
00:38:39There's a reason that the bike looks the way it looks.
00:38:41But you look at that bike, and bing, bang, it, oh, yeah.
00:38:47Yeah, that makes, that design says MotoGP.
00:38:52And that's the bike.
00:38:54That's what we as a consumer, even though we're not going MotoGP racing ourselves, we want a piece of that.
00:39:00And we have that feeling, and we watch those people be excellent on the track.
00:39:05Be excellent, yes.
00:39:06And you think, I could be that guy.
00:39:10And then you want to get that bike, you know?
00:39:12Because it speaks a certain language.
00:39:14M1000 double R, B4, Ducatis, I mean, they speak that language to us, just as many other things speak their own languages.
00:39:24Now, I hearken back to the chopper.
00:39:28In the 1950s, motorcycle drag racing achieved a certain popularity.
00:39:33Little booklets were issued.
00:39:35I had one.
00:39:36On how to soup up your 650 Triumph for drag racing.
00:39:42And what you had was a four-inch wide Avon slick, a big hefty tire.
00:39:47The engine all the way back against the tire, so its weight was adding traction.
00:39:53A spindly, a spindly, structured, reaching out front with a raked out front end.
00:40:00Why raked out?
00:40:01Because the various limber motorcycle frames of the time, when they were drag raced or taken to Bonneville, they started to do things that made people's stomachs queasy.
00:40:13They weaved, they weaved, they wobbled, because they lacked basic stiffness.
00:40:19So, raking the front end out was self-defense.
00:40:24Why put a brake on the front wheel when your goal is to go as fast as possible in 1,320 feet?
00:40:29People looked at these bikes and they said, man, that is cool.
00:40:34Well, I dig that big tire.
00:40:37Look at that.
00:40:38That's just, I got to have one.
00:40:40And before you knew it, people were doing crazy things like raking the front end out so that the engine was tipped up like this.
00:40:54And to me, it looked crazy.
00:40:57But to the people who were doing it, that's cool, man.
00:41:01Well, it is.
00:41:01And that's the thing about design.
00:41:03It flies off, style flies off by itself because it's supported by our emotions and our associations.
00:41:12Right.
00:41:12It's a feeling.
00:41:13Yes.
00:41:14It evokes a feeling.
00:41:16I mean, I've ridden many different kinds of choppers and, you know, dynamically, nope.
00:41:21I mean, just absolutely everything wrong with it.
00:41:24Even like Sugar Bear, Sugar Bear front end.
00:41:27Sugar Bear designed geometry to work.
00:41:30So, the rake and everything and the offset, he made it work.
00:41:35And a Sugar Bear front end was great on a chopper.
00:41:37And even the best chopper is still, you know, everybody wants to reach down and jockey shift and all this crazy stuff.
00:41:44But it's an attitude and a feeling.
00:41:47That's what it's about.
00:41:48You park the bike and it has a certain kick on the kickstand.
00:41:53You know, it's like it makes emotional sense to us.
00:41:58It's a feeling and that we seek that feeling depending on what our self-image is.
00:42:05You know, our primal expression of self-image that drives so much in motorcycling.
00:42:11Around the turn of the century, that is, 20th to the 21st, just after, bikes began to be given the features of supersonic aircraft.
00:42:28Pointy shapes that don't work well at subsonic speeds.
00:42:34Fake intakes that directed air to nothing that needed it.
00:42:41And all kinds of added-on business.
00:42:45So it became, I felt validated when the first videos and photos from the SEPANG test, the first real action in the MotoGP season came in because the bikes are in fairings.
00:43:02They're mounted on these bikes are black.
00:43:05They don't have any color on them and they are smooth.
00:43:11They don't have sharp edges.
00:43:13They don't have zigzag.
00:43:15This is a stealth bike.
00:43:16See the zigzag?
00:43:17That means stealth.
00:43:19So I'm just an old stick in the mud who clings desperately to reality or my impression of reality.
00:43:29When everyone else has been liberated and they say, I like the way a single-sided swing arm looks and I'm going to put one on my son's baby carriage.
00:43:41Well, yeah.
00:43:43Why not?
00:43:44Why not?
00:43:46There was the old lefty fork.
00:43:49Cannondale had a fork.
00:43:51It's not a fork.
00:43:52I don't know.
00:43:52It's a stick.
00:43:52But the front wheel was suspended on a horizontal axle and it was, they called it the lefty fork and it just had one leg that went down.
00:44:01Like a nose wheel on a tricycle gear airplane.
00:44:04Absolutely.
00:44:05Absolutely.
00:44:06I'm thinking of now also when you keep saying single-sided swing arm and then things that didn't mean anything or design choices that you made that you just decided to make.
00:44:16I think of the NR750.
00:44:17You know, the 1992 Honda NR750 oval piston.
00:44:23I mean, that's a certain kind of mechanical insanity right there.
00:44:27But just the visual signature, you know, little cat eye headlights and then single-sided swing arm coming from, you know, RC30 and endurance racing.
00:44:36It meant something.
00:44:37My VFR 750 single-sided swing arm.
00:44:40I got to have it.
00:44:42Gear-driven cams?
00:44:44Why, yes.
00:44:45I'll take that.
00:44:45I'm just rattling to and from work or, you know, sport riding, raging the twisties or whatever.
00:44:51There used to be a game.
00:44:53There used to be a game in the paddock at AMA Superbike races.
00:44:58Who's got the gear drive kit on their cams?
00:45:02And you would hear this gear whine.
00:45:05Ah, I've got it.
00:45:06The gear whine has an aesthetic value because gears are the most positive way to drive camshafts.
00:45:16That's the way it used to be.
00:45:18Now, the gear, the sound of gears could be built into the sound system on your bike.
00:45:25And you could have any sound you like.
00:45:28Well, I mean.
00:45:29Why not?
00:45:30The live wire, the first Harley-Davidson live wire, they, you know, they built a little whine into the drivetrain to give it kind of a turbine sound.
00:45:40That was them saying that going down the road, you know, getting that sound.
00:45:45But on the, I want to go back to the NR before we, we get lost in cam drive sounds and fake noise coming out of things.
00:45:52Is that the NR750 put the exhaust system in the tail section, which I can think of at least two really kind of dumb ways that that doesn't make sense.
00:46:03And one is heat for the rider because your asses and other things are right there.
00:46:07Yep.
00:46:08And then moving the weight high and to the back of the motorcycle away from the axis of rotation and all that.
00:46:18Which is why now they're putting that stainless box up under the engine with everything in it.
00:46:23And then there's a pipe that comes out to let the smoke out.
00:46:26Hat tip to Eric Buell.
00:46:27Yes, absolutely.
00:46:29For putting dual outlet Chevy mufflers under his Harley motors all those years ago.
00:46:35I mean, honestly, Eric, good job.
00:46:39Yeah.
00:46:40But nonsense styling.
00:46:41And what did we see in 94 when the Ducati 916 came out?
00:46:46Little cat eye headlights and two exhaust pipes stuffed under the seat.
00:46:50And, man, if you wanted to get hot, that's a place to take a ride is a 916, 996, 998.
00:46:57It's a good cooking.
00:47:00Yamaha's 500 two-stroke street bike had a 42-pound exhaust system.
00:47:07And part of it was used to heat the seat.
00:47:1042 pounds.
00:47:11I mean, imagine carrying a bag of horse grain, weighs 40 pounds.
00:47:18Just carry it around with you casually.
00:47:20Well, I just like, you know, I have a nibble now and then.
00:47:23Hang that on your motorcycle.
00:47:26That's why I wept for joy when somebody handed me a titanium exhaust system for an inline four with the muffler or what, you know, the collector.
00:47:38Oh, it's like a bag of popcorn.
00:47:40Seven pounds.
00:47:42Yeah, it was like air.
00:47:43It was like an Aprilia 250 gas tank.
00:47:46Many, many years ago, I got hauled through the Yamaha race shop.
00:47:49And it was just after, it was kind of just after the crazy prototype era when they were just doing the insane two-stroke stuff.
00:48:01All this super factory and just zillions of dollars into these prototype supercross bikes.
00:48:08And they're like, no, no, no.
00:48:09Come on, people.
00:48:09We can't.
00:48:10Let's just regularize this a little bit.
00:48:12But he had an expansion chamber made out of titanium.
00:48:18And I'd never held a titanium pipe.
00:48:19This is way back.
00:48:20And he's like, here, check it out.
00:48:22And he throws it to me.
00:48:23And I have this image in my mind of how much I got to be ready to catch this thing.
00:48:28Yeah.
00:48:28And I'm like, oh, it's like a, it's less than a cardboard box.
00:48:33You know, it's just, it's crazy for the size.
00:48:36Wonderful, wonderful stuff.
00:48:37So, we got off into this diversion because-
00:48:44Hybrids are done.
00:48:45Let's get back to that.
00:48:47We began talking about other ways to improve fuel consumption on motorcycles that we would
00:48:55probably do long before we built a hybrid.
00:48:57And one of them is to bring cruising RPM freeway, our engine speed down.
00:49:03And that would be much easier now with these automated shifting systems that are coming into
00:49:11use because then when you twisted the throttle, it would jump down two or three gears into the
00:49:18actual working part of the transmission.
00:49:20The engine would tack up and away you would go.
00:49:22But the rest of the time, you'd be getting terrific mileage because the engine would just
00:49:26be-
00:49:27The Honda Goldwing DCT has seven gears.
00:49:31And so it should.
00:49:32And when you're in the tour mode, well, seven gears, it's closing that spread ratio on
00:49:38the bottom, like one, two, three, the first to sixth or the first to top is the same ratio
00:49:44spread on the manual, which is six gears, but they add that other gear down low to smooth
00:49:50out the speed differential of the gear change so that you, your RPM drops are smoother and
00:49:57it just feels nicer.
00:49:58It doesn't go.
00:49:59But what you get-
00:50:01When it engages, yeah.
00:50:02When you're in that tour mode, when you're in the very chill, especially in the chill setting
00:50:06and you're letting it do the automatic shifting, you're not, you know, pulling triggers and
00:50:11messing about or giving it lots of throttle.
00:50:13When you whisper off the line on your 108 foot-pounds of torque at 1000 RPM, you just roll in and
00:50:20that thing peels off the line and it goes click, click, click, click.
00:50:24And by the time you're at the other side of the intersection, you're probably in fifth
00:50:27and you're, it's just, you're just down there.
00:50:32You're like at 1200 RPM.
00:50:33Yeah.
00:50:34Yeah.
00:50:34And you're, but you're, you have throttle and you are accelerating.
00:50:37So you are getting an efficient way of moving this, you know, 800 pound touring bike with
00:50:42a 225 pound meat bag on it, wearing gear and a helmet and riding to lunch.
00:50:49So I, I, um, that's all wonderful.
00:50:57I guess the next step in this conversation in my mind, uh, as I was doing some research
00:51:03for this very podcast about hybrids, et cetera, uh, is I came across this company in Canada
00:51:10and it doesn't have anything to do with motorcycles, but they're called Edison and, uh, they're truck
00:51:16people, they, they self-proclaimed truck people building trucks for truckers and they built
00:51:23a big rig that has a cat diesel generator and traction motors, electric motors.
00:51:30And they, they got these big rigs with like three drive wheels in the back and they built
00:51:35logging truck prototypes.
00:51:36And I think they're still trying to get license plates on it, but they're, you know, a vehicle
00:51:41manufacturer.
00:51:41They're building essentially a cat generator.
00:51:45Absolutely.
00:51:46And a big battery pack and then a big rig.
00:51:49So it's a diesel electric train for the road.
00:51:52And they have a kit that you can, you can invest in.
00:51:56I don't know if you can get the kit, but you can invest in the kit for your, whatever pickup
00:52:01truck you want.
00:52:02They're making two axles.
00:52:04So you have a four by four, you extract the drive train, you trash the transmission from
00:52:10your original truck, whether it's six speed, five speed, four speed, 10, whatever it is.
00:52:15Now it's gone.
00:52:16So you're saving some weight and then they slide this cat generator deal into your powertrain
00:52:22power barn under the hood of your vehicle.
00:52:25And they stuff some batteries all over this, give you some batteries.
00:52:28And then the axles are the drive unit.
00:52:32So you have disc brakes and they've got some incredibly high weight rating and you bolt these
00:52:36things to your leaf springs.
00:52:37So you need straight axle type trucks.
00:52:39So you're taking your 94 Cummins Dodge and get rid of it and put this thing in there.
00:52:46And you're going to end up with like 800 something foot.
00:52:49I mean, the foot pounds of torque from zero RPM is insane.
00:52:52It's four wheel drive.
00:52:54And your little diesel generator just hums away and you, you get all the benefits of diesel
00:53:00locomotion.
00:53:01Ferdinand Porsche did this a hundred years ago.
00:53:07He built, he built electric road trains.
00:53:11There was a power car, which had, just as you described, a powerful engine.
00:53:17It wasn't a diesel at that time, I think, driving a generator and electric power was sent to all
00:53:23the wheels up and down the train.
00:53:25So it wasn't going to get stuck casually.
00:53:28It was going to be quite resistant to getting stuck.
00:53:31And the power could be, the torque to the wheels could be well controlled.
00:53:37And there are historic photographs showing these Porsche electric hybrid trains operating.
00:53:50So these are, and they had hub motors.
00:53:53They had hub motors.
00:53:55Oh, amazing.
00:53:56So these ideas were out there waiting for higher temperature wire insulation, more efficient
00:54:04and diesel engines, all kinds of innovations yet to come.
00:54:12And so these people in Canada are saying, sure, let's do that.
00:54:17Take out your old axle, stand it on in, in the corner and say, pretend it's a Christmas tree, put
00:54:26all the presents around it and put the real deal under there, connect it to your leaf springs.
00:54:31And you are now a diesel electric.
00:54:38All the power going to the wheels is the electric power.
00:54:41Yeah, Dodge is...
00:54:42The diesel engine is there to make that electric power.
00:54:45Sorry.
00:54:46Just as on a diesel submarine, just as on a diesel locomotive.
00:54:53I said Dodge, but what I meant was Ram, because that's what they call their trucks.
00:54:57Yes, that's what they call it Ram.
00:54:59But Ram has got a prototype out there that does this very thing.
00:55:05And it seems very sensible for a truck.
00:55:07I mean, you know, I drive around in a 89 Ford F-250 when the ignition system and 89 electronics
00:55:20aren't messing with me.
00:55:22And I'm quite delighted to get 12 miles per gallon for my 400 pound feet of torque.
00:55:28It's pretty nice.
00:55:29And it always gets that much, you know, like unless you hammer it.
00:55:32But it's, you know, it's 10 and I can haul 7,000 pounds and it's pretty close to 10.
00:55:37It just doesn't seem to care that much.
00:55:39Yeah.
00:55:40But it makes perfect sense to do, you know, a constant throttle.
00:55:44I'm generating.
00:55:45And then you're just asking for the electric motors to do the work.
00:55:49I mean, it just absolutely makes sense.
00:55:52If you are trying to haul, hey, you're trying to haul logs.
00:55:56That's what they show on the Edison website is big trucks hauling logs,
00:56:01doing, and the way, God, I don't know who they hired to build this thing, their prototypes.
00:56:09But it's just like, here, here's a big flat plane.
00:56:13It looks like a, it looks like a 50s truck.
00:56:16It's just like a giant slab in the front.
00:56:18And then it's slabs on the side of where the generator barn is and then big windshield.
00:56:25And then it's got like, it's very industrial because the doors and the front cab and everything go down.
00:56:30And it's showing like, you could see out, you know, you could see out to the ground, but where your feet are.
00:56:38And then you're kind of in the middle.
00:56:39It's very, it's very cool industrial.
00:56:41It's very evocative of giant mining dozers and, and all these things.
00:56:46It's, it's neat design language, certainly.
00:56:51Yes.
00:56:52And who knows what's next?
00:56:55These things are being, these are market probes.
00:56:59The Benda 250 flat twin is a market probe.
00:57:02It's also a tech probe.
00:57:04They're saying, let's play around with some of these components.
00:57:10How light can we make it?
00:57:12What kind of control systems that we haven't thought of might be offer advantages we haven't considered?
00:57:21It's time to play.
00:57:23Don't you think?
00:57:25Play is activity that has no consequences.
00:57:29That is, you're not going to be punished for it.
00:57:31You're not going to get your hand in a trap.
00:57:33You're, you're just trying different things.
00:57:36I don't know.
00:57:36I really liked, I really liked skateboarding, you know, vert skate ramps, 12 footers.
00:57:41I liked all that.
00:57:42And there was plenty of consequence.
00:57:44Yeah, there's consequence.
00:57:46But I totally agree.
00:57:48So the, the play idea, this is the thing that when I sit around and I have a, at home, I have a Honda EU 2200i.
00:57:56It's a little suitcase generator.
00:57:58I mentioned it before.
00:57:59It's a, is this a drinking game?
00:58:00I'm not sure yet.
00:58:01It was my whole, whole type folks, but you know, a little pulsar generator and gosh, it's like a half a gallon or something.
00:58:09It has a tiny little fuel tank and that sucker will generate, you know, run my fridge when the power's turned off and all that for gosh, eight hours.
00:58:17It just runs and runs and it makes 2200 watts.
00:58:21And I think, well, hasn't someone in Honda gone, Hey, that only weighs 50 pounds and it makes 2200 watts.
00:58:29How many watts are we, if we put an electric motor on this little thing and we put that suitcase under the rider, like it has to have happened.
00:58:37Don't you think someone at Honda has played with one of their little generators in a, in basically the, a battery repository and a little hub electric motor.
00:58:48It has to exist.
00:58:49Like BMWs, like BMWs, off-road riders in their, in their experimental department were unleashed.
00:58:56They said, we need a new image, not the image of the professor emeritus touring Europe at 28 average miles per hour.
00:59:09But one of the joy of life and what could be more joyful than setting off cross country on a motorbike.
00:59:19And so they created that R80 GS that just turned BMW in a fresh direction and people liked it and they still like it.
00:59:31So this is the value of play.
00:59:34You might learn something.
00:59:35You might come up with an idea that is the right idea at the right time, like BMW did by unleashing those people.
00:59:47They were all a bunch of enduro riders, but they came to work to become, to manufacture sober, sensible motorcycles.
00:59:55Yeah.
00:59:55We're not, we're not having fun.
00:59:57We're doing things correctly.
00:59:59They did do that a long time, but they've somehow, I can't imagine the wrestling matches they must have got in, you know, to come out with an S-1000 double R.
01:00:11Yeah.
01:00:11And, and to just say, no, we're putting a telescopic fork on it.
01:00:15Yes, sir.
01:00:15No, we're, no, we're just going to do that.
01:00:18And then, oh, Hey, by the way, look, check out this turn signal switch on the left handlebar.
01:00:21I don't, you know, there's probably an entire generation of BMW rider who doesn't know and doesn't care that you used to push up on a button on your right hand to turn right.
01:00:33And you used to push up on a button to turn left on your left grip.
01:00:37Like Harley still has the push left, push right.
01:00:40Yeah.
01:00:40What I like about the button on the left is that if you push it to the left, you know, it's the left.
01:00:45You push it to the right, you know, it's the light to the right.
01:00:47And no matter what you do is if you push it in, it's doing nothing, whereas automatic canceling turn signals on a Harley, you hit it and you're going and like, is it still on?
01:00:56I'm not sure if it's still on.
01:00:58I better hit it again.
01:00:59And you can definitely hit it again and it will, it will keep flashing if it's not, and it will keep flashing if it is.
01:01:04But to actually turn it off, what do you do?
01:01:09Hit them both?
01:01:10No, wait, that's hazards.
01:01:11Anyways.
01:01:11But yeah, the play idea, you know, when you get, you take a company like Harley Davidson, you know, they build a certain kind of product for a long time that they've sold, you know, billions of dollars worth.
01:01:24And the whole brand around this idea of engineering kind of experience that their riders want.
01:01:33And the mass market, you know, I mean, nevermind that sales are a little rough right now.
01:01:37I mean, over, over history, particularly from the eighties, massive amounts of sales and huge impact.
01:01:45And there were this, it's a certain kind of bike.
01:01:47It's, you know, 45 degree V twin potato, potato, a lot of engineering going into it to make it do the thing that it should do for the rider.
01:01:57And then they, you know, kind of got off on the technical bent, like, Hey, we're going to compete in adventure bikes.
01:02:02And we're going to change the sportster and maybe we'll come out with a naked bike performance thing called the Bronx, but actually no, we hit pause on that.
01:02:12But the whole backside of that company, there are plenty of guys who are, are very much cruiser people, hardcore.
01:02:19I want to ride long distances, pay, take big touring on big V twins, but there's plenty of people in that company who road race.
01:02:28You know, they, they road raced GSXR 1000s, one of their key test riders, uh, development guy on the XR 1200 and many other things was the GSXR 1000 racer.
01:02:41And his test riders were racers, you know, this is, this is hardcore.
01:02:45There's a guy in PR, Paul James, you know, he's still super motoring, you know, he's, he's about my age and he's out there racing club super moto because he's hardcore, all these guys.
01:02:56So it's, uh, it influences what your product can be.
01:03:02And so, yeah, it's, yeah.
01:03:04I mean, no, no, the motorcycle can be like this.
01:03:07What if we just try that, you know, like within, within our own design language, what if we design heavyweight cruisers at Indian and at Harley Davidson?
01:03:16What if we took a racing mindset to a lot of those parts and what if we dropped 13 pounds off of each wheel?
01:03:26Like I was so delighted when victory motorcycles, probably about 15, 10 years ago, eight years, 10 years ago, more than that now.
01:03:35Yikes.
01:03:36Um, a long time ago, victory was touting.
01:03:41They didn't do a ton of, I think, model work in this year, but they lightened all of their wheels and they put it in the press release.
01:03:51And I was like mad respect to a cruiser company for doing that because it's the weight, the, the weight discussions barely in the room.
01:03:59A lot of times, I think, I think Harley on the, uh, on the latest soft tail, they did a lot of work to, to bring that weight conversation in the room.
01:04:10And certainly, uh, on the adventure bike, you know, the Pan America, they, they had a weight target.
01:04:15And in fact, part of that weight target was us calling them out and saying that if it, if it does, if it weighs less than this, we'll buy pizza and beer for the, you know, the PDC.
01:04:27And we did, we actually, they, they said, Hey, we're hungry.
01:04:31Cause they came out with the specs and sure enough, they hit that number.
01:04:34And they put, they put that challenge up in the department and on the wall, like, Hey, we'll buy you pizza and beer.
01:04:39And then they came in our comments and said, Hey, we're hungry.
01:04:44You made a promise.
01:04:46And so we did, we, we spent a lot of money and, and went there and bought them pizza and beer.
01:04:50And we actually got beer in the PDC, which was sort of a, a triumph apparently.
01:04:56Sorry about that.
01:04:57Triumph.
01:04:58Um, in any case, well, that was hybrids.
01:05:01I think, uh, are hybrids dumb?
01:05:03Not really.
01:05:03I mean, I think it's a great experiment.
01:05:05Great experiment.
01:05:07Great experiment and rationally done.
01:05:08I mean, um, you know, high five to Benda for coming out with something unusual and, and messing around with it.
01:05:14And, uh.
01:05:16Mind you, it's a prototype at this point.
01:05:18Yeah.
01:05:18They have a larger displacement flat twin somewhere out there that's in the 700 range.
01:05:22So they're thinking about these things and they're doing, you know, they're, I don't know what, I don't know where that sense of freedom is coming from Benda, but well done.
01:05:32And thanks for showing it to us because how many of these really interesting prototypes do we never see?
01:05:41Many.
01:05:42Yeah.
01:05:42So many.
01:05:43All the manufacturers build them constantly.
01:05:46Drawers and drawers of design concepts and then hard parts.
01:05:50And then let's try it out and build this.
01:05:52And I want to meet the test reports.
01:05:54Yeah.
01:05:54Right.
01:05:55I want to meet the guy at Honda who's got that EU 2200 generator incorporated into his little two-wheeler with an electric hub motor and a reservoir, a battery reservoir to help him get down the road.
01:06:08Somebody did it.
01:06:10Anyway, thanks for listening, folks.
01:06:12We appreciate you being with us.
01:06:15Share this with your friends.
01:06:17And, uh.
01:06:19Anything else, Kevin?
01:06:20I guess we'll just see you next time.
01:06:22Yeah.
01:06:22That's what we'll do.
01:06:23We'll see you next time.
01:06:24Thanks for listening.
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