Yamaha Just Introduced Its First Hybrid Powertrain, and Here It Is

I've ridden a number of EV motorbikes now, so I can tell you from experience that there are both good and bad points about the genre. How you ultimately feel about them will depend on your feelings regarding several things.

The TL;DR version is, if you commute frequently in stop-and-go small town or urban traffic, and you don't have to do a lot of battery-draining highway mile-munching, they're great. That's also assuming you find one you like at a price you're willing to pay, but that's another issue.

But the number of motorcycle OEMs that are thinking differently about the EV motorbike range conundrum has now doubled. First, there was Kawasaki and its Ninja 7 and Z7 Hybrids. And now, Yamaha's just introduced its new Series Parallel Hybrid Electric Vehicle technology with a short introductory video (in Japanese, but the diagrams are labeled in English).

The demonstrator vehicle shown in the video is a modified XMAX, which has a generator motor that attaches directly to a combustion engine. You can start the bike under electric power, and then use regen braking to return some energy to the battery at what Yamaha somewhat vaguely refers to as "normal speeds." Hopefully, it will give a more specific range of what it considers "normal speeds" closer to the introduction of any planned vehicles that use this technology.

Operating the vehicle at higher speeds will switch it to the combustion engine, but even higher speeds than that will apparently re-activate one of the electric motors, so you get an extra burst of power. Since this is just a preliminary introduction to the Series Parallel HEV concept, full technical details aren't yet available. So, if you've got questions, rest assured; so do we.

There's at least one we can answer at this point, though, and it's this: Does Yamaha intend to use this Series Parallel HEV tech in any other two-wheelers? At this point, Yamaha's pretty clear about its intentions to develop full-size hybrid motorcycles of its own, not just scooters. No, really.

I, for one, would love to see what this thing is like to ride, whether in XMAX form or on a more traditional Yamaha motorcycle. Any time you're interested in having members of the press check it out, I'm game, Team Blue.