NEWS 3
2017 Yamaha R6 image appears in Japan
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It’s not a real photograph, but it is a computer-generated image based on what factory sources say is happening to the razor-sharp 600. This news comes to us from the same source that first revealed the piggyback exhaust ends on the Honda CBR250RR. That information was absolutely spot on – and now they’ve come up with this. Here’s what our source says the next generation of Yamaha R6 WILL look like.
Things to note about this bike: the front of the fairing is radical with its CFD winglets protruding from the nose; the secondary bank of LED bar lights sitting like eyes above the mini-searchlight round headlights which themselves sit like nostrils on either side of the R1-esque air intake scoop; and the R1-style vents in the front of the petrol tank cover. The current bike (left) makes 123bhp @ 14,500rpm. The new bike, according to our Japanese friends, is going to clear 130bhp at around the same redline. The compression ratio of 13.1:1 is likely to stay the same and the motor is going to stay at 600cc. The seat unit is coming in for some Aprilia-esque styling (the pillion pegs look very much like
Excitement builds for Snake River ‘take two’!
an afterthought) but it’s the fairing where the biggest and most obvious changes have happened. The sides of the fairing are split into various winged elements; one off the
shoulders of the main fairing, the other will sit just behind the radiator and the third is at the bottom section of the fairing in a similar style to the CBR250RR’s.
By the time you read this American stuntman Eddie Braun will be about to recreate the famous canyon jump attempted by Evel Knievel in his Skycycle X-2, 42 years ago. Braun will fire a modern version of the Skycycle over the Snake River Canyon in Idaho as the ultimate fan tribute to the legendary superstar.
CONFIRMED: Kawasaki developing artificial intelligence for motorcycles
M20 bridge collapse biker: “My first thought was for my crushed MT-07.” The biker who was injured when a pedestrian bridge collapsed on to the M20 last month has admitted that in the immediate aftermath of the devastation his first thoughts were for his crushed Yamaha MT-07. Jim Shaw, 73, of Thamesmead, South East London, escaped with just five broken ribs when the footbridge near Maidstone was hit by a lorry carrying a digger on August 27. Shaw said that he was travelling at 70mph and: “Chaos broke loose. Bits were flying everywhere. I moved to the outside lane. There was only one place to go. I threw the bike on the floor and went under.” Speaking to the BBC from his hospital bed in Tunbridge Wells, Mr Shaw said: “I was riding down the motorway, enjoying life as it goes by and then I saw that the bridge was coming down, almost like in was in slow motion, because it’s eating its way through the lorry. “But then it tore away from the other side. As that came down, it was a matter of ‘throw the bike on the floor and go for it’. I’ve a few broken ribs, but they mend. “My first thought when I came to rest was, ‘oh well, there goes my bike’. It was a great bike.”
Motor Cycle Monthly, Media Centre, Morton Way, Horncastle, Lincolnshire LN9 6JR Tel: 01507 529529 Email: editorial@motorcyclemonthly.co.uk
Editor Tony Carter Editorial design Fran Lovely Publisher Steve Rose Picture desk Paul Fincham, Jonathan Schofield Production editor Jack Harrison Divisional advertising manager Martin Freeman 01507 529538 Advertising Lee Buxton 01507 529453 Marketing manager Charlotte Park Publishing director Dan Savage Commercial director Nigel Hole Associate director Malcolm Wheeler Advertising deadline for November issue Thursday, September 29, 2016
Kawasaki has announced that it IS working on an artificial intelligence system that will let your bike communicate and adapt to your needs as you ride. The artificial intelligence system will not only be able to ‘talk’ and respond to a rider’s commands, but can change a bike’s set-up, power and handling character exactly as needed by the rider. All of this will be done via a live link to specific AI cloud computing. So far, so next-generation, but the biggest (and most ‘Knight Rider-y’ part of all of this) is that the AI on the motorcycle won’t ‘just’ be limited to shifting major bike components as needed, but will also feature what Kawasaki calls an ‘Emotion Engine’ which will interpret a rider’s emotions and could give the bike its own personality. p y Yep, p, yyour H2R
could literally have a mind of its own, and a mood to match. And it’ll be able to read your mood, too. And talk to you. The Emotion Engine isn’t the stuff of Arthur C Clarke though, it’s very real and already happening, developed by a company called Cocoro SB which is part of the mega tech giant SoftBank which, incidentally, has recently acquired ARM technologies just outside of Cambridge, one of the world’s leading developers of microchip and small-tech futures. Although the tech is pretty basic at the moment, the Emotion Engine is here and is moving forward at a rapid rate. Next stop – as officially announced by Kawasaki – is to implement it onto your bikes so your machine can talk to you and (more importantly) listen to you as you y ride.
MT-07 getting a facelift Secret drawings for the 2017 Yamaha MT-07 have revealed that the hugely popular middleweight is getting a new face for next year. The bike’s headlight set-up is being replaced with a MT-10-esque fourlight system. Each of the small round LED headlights give a stronger, more concentrated beam of light than a conventional-style larger headlight, but because the beams are so narrow there has to be four of them to ensure that enough of the road is covered while riding at night.
Vietnamese capital to ban all bikes by 2025
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How many motorcycles in a major city is too many? In excess of seven million is the answer – if you were wondering. Officials in Hanoi are predicting the number of bikes to hit that figure by 2025, and they’ve decided enough is enough. Moves are afoot by Nguyen Duc Chung, who is the chairman of the People’s Committee, to stop motorcycles entering the city altogether once the figure of registered motorcycles to Hanoi rises from the current 4.6 million to the predicted limit. Once banned, current riders are being told to switch to public transport instead.