It’s
that time of the year again. Summer’s over, the
leaves are falling fast from the trees, the days are getting shorter
and thermal linings and Gore-Tex are replacing vented leathers.
Yes, it’s time for the bike manufacturers to hit us with
the news of next year’s models, and it’s no surprise
to find that they’re all selling us on more power, less
weight, and better handling. In a single word – performance.
Anything less than 150bhp at the back wheel just ain’t good
enough and everyone seems to be getting excited about the 1bhp
per kilogram figure.
Now taking advantage of new technologies is no bad thing, and
it’s a sign of a developing society that it always wants
to find new answers to old problems and move the boundaries of
science ever forward. But at a time when virtually everything
on two wheels that isn’t learner-legal can comfortably exceed
the speed limits in this country and out perform just about everything
with four or more wheels on the road, maybe it’s time to
ask why bike technology is still single-mindedly focussed on performance.
Is part of the answer the fact that motorcycling is no longer
a serious means of transportation, but purely a leisure activity?
There’s no getting away from the fact that for the majority
of people in the UK the car is the primary form of transport.
And in spite of successive governments attempts to get people
to make more use of public services like buses and trains, the
private car still has no equal for convenience and versatility.
This meant that the bike manufacturer’s marketing departments
had had to rethink their strategies.
In the seventies and eighties car designers got the performance
bug. This was the era of turbo-charging, 16-valve heads, spoilers
and air dams, hot hatches, alloy wheels and low profile tyres
for the masses. Remember the Sierra Cosworth? In the nineties,
with insurance costs and fuel prices rocketing, the car industry
did a bit of a one-eighty and went all out on safety and comfort,
with air bags, side impact protection bars, lean burn engines,
climate control, crumple zones, NVH reduction and masses of in-car
electronics. Performance didn’t get a look in. But what
about those drivers who still enjoyed the dynamics of driving
and didn’t see the car solely as a means of getting from
A to B? There were still small-volume performance car manufacturers
out there, but it was difficult to justify the purchase and running
costs to the rest of the family and the bank manager. Enter the
performance motorbike. For much less than a tenth of the cost,
here was something that could out perform even the most exotic
supercar, and could still be squeezed into the back of the garage
behind the Mondeo, Vectra or Laguna.
The weekend biker had been born!
This
was what the bike manufacturers had been looking for, and from
the mid-nineties we’ve been bombarded with more and more
two-wheeled technology that has little reference to the needs
of real world biking. Fair enough, some of it has been fuelled
by the needs of race series like Superbikes and Supersports, but
you could also argue that these championships only came into being
because the road bikes already existed in the first place. Chicken
or egg anyone?
Now I’d be the last person to decry the delights of riding
a performance bike, but I can’t help thinking that we’re
missing out on what the current technology could be doing for
all of us. Why do most bikes need to make a fuel stop every 150
miles or so? No one these days really buys a motorbike to cut
down their petrol consumption, but car engineers have managed
to make more economical engines that produce significant increases
in power. How about a bit of technology transfer guys?
The DiTech 2-stroke engine looks an extremely interesting beast,
with amazing power outputs and fuel economy, coupled with design
simplicity and low maintenance, but only Aprilia are doing anything
with the technology at the moment and that’s only on scooters.
Put this kind of engine into mainstream motorcycles and the results
could be really interesting.
Maintenance intervals are another thing that manufacturers should
be addressing with technology. Although some bikes can now go
6000 miles before they need to get close to a set of tools, most
still need a good going over every 4 to 4,500 miles, and many
seem to be designed to make routine servicing as difficult (also
means expensive) as possible. At a time when most cars have a
first service at 12,000 miles and in some cases the figure’s
as high as 20 to 30,000 miles, the short service intervals on
bikes have got to be a bit of a joke.
If
there was ever an application for active suspension, then it’s
got to be the motorbike. With only two contact patches to play
with and the inherent instability of the design, some form of
active ride control could do a lot towards improving the safety,
comfort and performance of just about any bike. And with the weight
of the load carried on a bike being such a high percentage of
the overall mass of the vehicle, an active suspension system would
do wonders for evening out the effects of pillions, luggage, and
even different sizes of riders on the way the bike handles. There
would be no more winding up the rear preload every time we gave
a mate a lift on the back or fitted panniers to go off on holiday.
It wouldn’t matter if you weighed nine or fifteen stone,
the bike’s suspension would still be set up correctly for
you. The system would even be able to adjust automatically for
road conditions, speed and angles of lean to give the best ride
at that particular moment.
But I’m sorry to say that while motorcycling remains a
leisure activity, the chances of any of these “technology
advances” being applied to our bikes are extremely slim.
Maybe this time next year, when we get the first look at what
the “big boys” have got planned for us in 2005. However,
I have a feeling that it’s going to take more than what’s
really going to be a leap of faith by one of the big manufacturers,
before we see any major changes in the bikes we are offered. Only
a step change in the position of motorbikes in our society at
large could bring about the application of new technologies to
bike production, and this could be due to some external factor
that I don’t even want to think about.
Perhaps in 2020 I can say “I told you so”.
New motorcycle models and features for 2004
It’s
that time of the year again. Summer’s over, the
leaves are falling fast from the trees, the days are getting shorter
and thermal linings and Gore-Tex are replacing vented leathers.
Yes, it’s time for the bike manufacturers to hit us with
the news of next year’s models, and it’s no surprise
to find that they’re all selling us on more power, less
weight, and better handling. In a single word – performance.
Anything less than 150bhp at the back wheel just ain’t good
enough and everyone seems to be getting excited about the 1bhp
per kilogram figure.
Now taking advantage of new technologies is no bad thing, and
it’s a sign of a developing society that it always wants
to find new answers to old problems and move the boundaries of
science ever forward. But at a time when virtually everything
on two wheels that isn’t learner-legal can comfortably exceed
the speed limits in this country and out perform just about everything
with four or more wheels on the road, maybe it’s time to
ask why bike technology is still single-mindedly focussed on performance.
Is part of the answer the fact that motorcycling is no longer
a serious means of transportation, but purely a leisure activity?
There’s no getting away from the fact that for the majority
of people in the UK the car is the primary form of transport.
And in spite of successive governments attempts to get people
to make more use of public services like buses and trains, the
private car still has no equal for convenience and versatility.
This meant that the bike manufacturer’s marketing departments
had had to rethink their strategies.
In the seventies and eighties car designers got the performance
bug. This was the era of turbo-charging, 16-valve heads, spoilers
and air dams, hot hatches, alloy wheels and low profile tyres
for the masses. Remember the Sierra Cosworth? In the nineties,
with insurance costs and fuel prices rocketing, the car industry
did a bit of a one-eighty and went all out on safety and comfort,
with air bags, side impact protection bars, lean burn engines,
climate control, crumple zones, NVH reduction and masses of in-car
electronics. Performance didn’t get a look in. But what
about those drivers who still enjoyed the dynamics of driving
and didn’t see the car solely as a means of getting from
A to B? There were still small-volume performance car manufacturers
out there, but it was difficult to justify the purchase and running
costs to the rest of the family and the bank manager. Enter the
performance motorbike. For much less than a tenth of the cost,
here was something that could out perform even the most exotic
supercar, and could still be squeezed into the back of the garage
behind the Mondeo, Vectra or Laguna.
The weekend biker had been born!
This
was what the bike manufacturers had been looking for, and from
the mid-nineties we’ve been bombarded with more and more
two-wheeled technology that has little reference to the needs
of real world biking. Fair enough, some of it has been fuelled
by the needs of race series like Superbikes and Supersports, but
you could also argue that these championships only came into being
because the road bikes already existed in the first place. Chicken
or egg anyone?
Now I’d be the last person to decry the delights of riding
a performance bike, but I can’t help thinking that we’re
missing out on what the current technology could be doing for
all of us. Why do most bikes need to make a fuel stop every 150
miles or so? No one these days really buys a motorbike to cut
down their petrol consumption, but car engineers have managed
to make more economical engines that produce significant increases
in power. How about a bit of technology transfer guys?
The DiTech 2-stroke engine looks an extremely interesting beast,
with amazing power outputs and fuel economy, coupled with design
simplicity and low maintenance, but only Aprilia are doing anything
with the technology at the moment and that’s only on scooters.
Put this kind of engine into mainstream motorcycles and the results
could be really interesting.
Maintenance intervals are another thing that manufacturers should
be addressing with technology. Although some bikes can now go
6000 miles before they need to get close to a set of tools, most
still need a good going over every 4 to 4,500 miles, and many
seem to be designed to make routine servicing as difficult (also
means expensive) as possible. At a time when most cars have a
first service at 12,000 miles and in some cases the figure’s
as high as 20 to 30,000 miles, the short service intervals on
bikes have got to be a bit of a joke.
If
there was ever an application for active suspension, then it’s
got to be the motorbike. With only two contact patches to play
with and the inherent instability of the design, some form of
active ride control could do a lot towards improving the safety,
comfort and performance of just about any bike. And with the weight
of the load carried on a bike being such a high percentage of
the overall mass of the vehicle, an active suspension system would
do wonders for evening out the effects of pillions, luggage, and
even different sizes of riders on the way the bike handles. There
would be no more winding up the rear preload every time we gave
a mate a lift on the back or fitted panniers to go off on holiday.
It wouldn’t matter if you weighed nine or fifteen stone,
the bike’s suspension would still be set up correctly for
you. The system would even be able to adjust automatically for
road conditions, speed and angles of lean to give the best ride
at that particular moment.
But I’m sorry to say that while motorcycling remains a
leisure activity, the chances of any of these “technology
advances” being applied to our bikes are extremely slim.
Maybe this time next year, when we get the first look at what
the “big boys” have got planned for us in 2005. However,
I have a feeling that it’s going to take more than what’s
really going to be a leap of faith by one of the big manufacturers,
before we see any major changes in the bikes we are offered. Only
a step change in the position of motorbikes in our society at
large could bring about the application of new technologies to
bike production, and this could be due to some external factor
that I don’t even want to think about.
Perhaps in 2020 I can say “I told you so”.