Kawasaki

[Fatfatboy]

Kawasaki has announced some news on a couple points this month.

The biggest is that they are aiming to have all electric motorcycles in USA, Canada, Japan, Europe and Australia by  2035 and plan to have 10 e-bike models by 2025. No word on the street to dirt bike ratios.

With youth starting out on small e-bikes they will be more comfortable with these bikes than us old codgers so the lack of suck, bang, blow will be no big deal to them.
I’d like to spend some time with an e-bike but I’m not ready to go all electric.

Kawasaki also stated that they plan to boost sales to 9 billion dollars and raise profit margins by 2030. No word on how this will be accomplished.

They are aiming to help in Enviromental impact  as well by promoting motorcycles as a more environmentally friendly way to solo travel and because of less caged up commuting less chance of getting an infectious decease.
I hope they can succeed in their efforts. We need more younger folks getting into motorcycles even if they are doing it quietly.

https://amp.interestingengineering.com/its-official-kawasaki-motorcycles-is-going-all-electric-by-2035

[Fatfatboy]

More Kawasaki news.

They are expanding general motor production in Missouri.
They are for their lawn and garden stuff so not moto related but it’s good to see them putting some of my ‘Mercuns to work in rural Show Me State.

https://ded.mo.gov/content/kawasaki-motors-open-new-facility-boonville-creating-more-270-new-jobs


Very busy company.
The release of the hybrid bike.
https://www.cycleworld.com/story/motorcycle-news/kawasaki-reveals-hydrogen-fueled-bike-plans/


Pulls up to pump, “Fill’er up with Hydro, Joe.”

[motogrady]

It, juicer bikes, would certainly help the dirt bike guys.  Well, to a very small extent it already has.  Mainly for the no noise factor.  The noise and neighbor has to be one of the biggest threats to dirt bike racing.

I've seen stories where guys with a little bit of coin buy a big house with 3 or 4 acres, in the middle of the high dollar Suburbs, and can ride with their kids in their back yards and virtually nobody but them knows it. Can't do that with gasoline.

Bummer these guys, Alta, went belly up about 3 years ago.

But eh, maybe they gave a glimpse of the future.

https://youtu.be/CTmuawNFp8Q

[Allred]

This whole electric things does seem to be an unstoppable future. Probably as unstoppable as the internal combustion machine was when it replaced the horse and carriage, and there were probably many like us who resisted its coming as we are resisting its passing.

It's been predicted in the many, often comically whimsical, futuristic Hollywood presentations, not least "The Jetsons", but it seems we are fast approaching, or have arrived, there.

All these years we strived for faster and faster vehicles, and yet when the Teslas show up with two-second 0-60s we mutter things about limited range. I don't remember anyone protesting about getting 8-11 mpg from their 454 cu in V8s.  

Here in California we are continuously warned about the fragility of our power-producing infrastructure, of "Brown-Outs" and the continuously higher and higher costs of producing electricity, of how we are using up our non-renewable energy sources, and yet simultaneously being told we should switch to electric vehicles as though the energy source is free. But that's politicians for you.

Who wouldn't want to be rid of the grotesquely antiquated, dirty, polluting "suck-wheeze-bang-blow" of noisy reciprocating iron. As a rhetorical question, I guess they asked similar questions about lamenting the passing of temperamental, dirty, problematic, highly restrictive, modes of transport like horses!

I remember lamenting the disappearance of lots of chrome on cars, or the disappearance of easy-to-use car door handles, you know, the ones with large chromed buttons that you pressed, replaced by the plastic things that you lift upwards or sideways, while at the same time try to pull the door open. I remember complaining about the removal of lead from gasoline......."What do you mean 87 octane?" Or adding expensive, complicated, power-sapping silly smog devices to cars. And we all know that asbestos is the best brake lining material!!!

I guess we will succumb, and batteries will get smaller, and more powerful, and charge in increasingly less time, and it will all feel as if it always was.

.

[m143]

Meh,

My Grandkids did the OSET thing. Battery power got their skills established for gas powered manually shifted dirt bikes.

I think they would have lost interest in riding if electric was all there was.

Anyway IC's death sentence has been written. It will die because fuel will be too expensive or non-existent.

The future sux.

[oldironnow]

I sense a vertical play by Kawasaki regarding hydrogen.

KHI likes to build big things.

The H(2) powered motorcycle would be at the opposite end of all the hydrogen infrastructure.

I like the concept. I like the output. But I'm concerned about living with hydrogen on an everyday basis.

Of course, my concerns are informed only by hearsay.

My dad worked in the refinery business. He said hydrogen was sketchy stuff to work around. Since it's so molecularly small, it's hard to keep inside things. It can climb walls as a superfluid. A hydrogen fire is invisible. Walking past a high pressure jet of burning hydrogen gas can 'cut your leg off.'

[Mad4TheCrest]

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[Allred]

https://www.cycleworld.com/story/blogs/ask-kevin/energy-storage-capacity-in-the-future/

KC gives us the low-down.

.

[Fatfatboy]

Just a teaser.

https://youtu.be/1KTa-o0qvNc