| Author | Message | ||
     Finedaddy1 |
Fast1075 - I was thinking the same thing...that just looks "odd". Maybe it's just a computer generated rendering of what the bike may look like. | ||
| Trojan |
It's pretty obviously a rendering and not a real bike at this stage. The engine doesn't even look developed at all and is just an artists impression of a water cooled twin cylinder engine with no detail beyond that. maybe they are waiting for teh Yamaha MT07 so they can pinch that technology  | ||
| Rocket_in_uk |
It's not a particularly well written report in terms of accurate information is it. In just over two years since commencing its solo journey Oh I thought they'd partnered up some with EBR. unveiling a 600cc superbike at the Auto Expo. It doesn't look like a superbike. showcased an innovative concept model - the world's first turbocharged direct injection diesel-run-bike Quite important to mention it's actually a hybrid diesel electric (slightly more so than it being Di) the world's largest two-wheeler manufacturer Really? I don't think so. the yellowcoloured metal frame tubes Pretty sure that's orange. where super bikes sales are one of the fastest in the world, India? Superbikes? When contacted, the Hero MotoCorp spokesperson declined to comment on the subject. Likely the most accurate piece of information in the whole article. Rocket in England | ||
| Court |
From HERO Motorcrop Press Data Center:
And for fun | ||
| Rocket_in_uk |
the world's largest two-wheeler manufacturer Really? I don't think so. Apologies, I meant motorcycles. It's a bit of a stretch to jump from small capacity two wheelers to motorcycles of 250cc and more. In which case Hero are no where near the top. Not that it matters of course, but it's not actually factual, and for this reason somewhat misleading, when it comes to marketing (not that they are yet) a 600cc motorcycle of which you've never built any at this capacity or even near this capacity previously. The suggestion being that you're world leaders in medium capacity motorcycle production when you are not. Rocket in England | ||
| Trojan |
Why is it that until Hero teamed up with EBR nobody would give their products a second glance, being that they are typical third world Honda clones with build quality that western buyers would laugh at. Until now Hero buyers have been third world commuters, famers and the taliban. Now we have a tie up with EBR and suddenly Hero bikes are desirable? Take off ther rose tinted glasses folks, they are the same as they were before but with bigger ambition. I'm sure they (along with all the other Indian/Chinese/Korean manufacturers will improve by leaps and bounds due to deals with established manufacturers like KTM, BMW and now EBR, but lets not fool oursleves, it will be a while before they bring out anything to worry the big players in the Superbike industry. As Rocket says, a 600cc twin is not a Superbike by any stretch (unless you are in India and have only ever seen 125cc Honda clones or Royal Enfields). I'm sure eventually we will see decent sprots bikes as a result of the EBR/Hero tie up, but this isn't it. Funnily enough the most exciting product revealed is actually the diesel scooter built to carry huge amounts of luggage/household chattels/animals, as they have the huge Indian market crying out for that. | ||
| Court |
>>>Funnily enough the most exciting product revealed is actually the diesel scooter built to carry huge amounts of luggage/household chattels/animals, as they have the huge Indian market crying out for that. There have been jokes about that for a long time . . . I hope to someday share some hilarious stories. It is precisely what the customer wants. | ||
| Trojan |
It is precisely what the customer wants. Exactly. So maybe that is the area that Hero should stick to rather than try to grab a slice of a fast diminishing sportsbike market. There are growth sectors in the motorcycle market even now, but sportsbikes is not one of them (Utility/adventure sports/naked are the only real growth areas). Companies such as Royal Enfield and even Ural have shown that you can find a niche market and fill it with little or no competition from the Japanese  It may be a small niche but it is all yours. | ||
| Hootowl |
"Why is it that until Hero teamed up with EBR nobody would give their products a second glance" I would have had to have had a first glance to give them a second one. They aren't available in the US, and while I have been to several countries in that part of the world, I didn't notice what brand of scooters they were riding. Honestly, I had not heard of them until they began their sponsorship of EBR's racing effort. And, quite frankly, I'm not in the market for a small motorcycle, so after having a first glance, I'm not giving them a second one. That said, their support of EBR warrants interest in the company, and the hope that their efforts bear fruit. A scooter is not a "motorcycle" in my mind either, but the article did say "two wheeler", and not "motorcycle". It was...ahem...an accurate statement. | ||
| Hootowl |
"built to carry huge amounts of luggage/household chattels/animals" It's amazing what you can do if the need is great enough. This guy needed to carry passengers in luxurious comfort.  | ||
| Trojan |
I love the 'God Lives' logo on his leg shield. Maybe it should say...God Lives...but not for long on Indian roads!' | ||
| Court |
HERO Motorcorp is going places that no Indian company ever has. They, Munjal family is breaking new ground after their 30 year relationship with Honda. They're smart and they are smart enough to know that they are REALLY good at some things and need lots of help in others. They were smart enough to recognize, after a much closer inspection and evaluation than many will ever know the details of, that the team of ELVES at Erik Buell Racing has the intellectual and technical firepower to do things that no one else in the world can do. Read that again . . .no one else in the world. . . .not Honda, not Porsche (someday you'll learn of all the work Buell did for Porsche . . . hint: the VROD was 0% of it). This is a new world. Even the TEAM ELVES Bonneville effort in 2000 leverage resources from Badweb members in The Netherlands, Denmark, UK, France, Belgium, Italy and Australia. In the current day and team member at EBR can work on a project until 6pm and hand the file off to his/her team member in Delhi, where it's 11 hours and 30 minutes ahead, to continue. This is resulting in an amazing compression of development time. HERO has unbelievable (even if you doubt the "largest 2 wheeled manufacturer in the world") manufacturing clout. I don't care what you're building . . . . even 17,000 Radio Flyer wagons in a single day is a lot. Check out Honda's number on their 2011 tech faqs report and you'll see, Time have changed. I expect to see motorcycles that amaze me. We are within years, not decades, of something akin to the Star Wars Speeder Bikes. The 2D constraint of traffic will be history. Bikes will know how to act, what suspension setting, what ECM settings and even what fuel to use based on your GPS location. Copper wire . . the most vulnerable part of the motorcycle . . will be history . . . yielding to "directed as needed" wave power to lights, controls, modules and systems. Most folks can't grasp this. That's ok. I hold nothing against them and simply count them as potential competitors I won't have to deal with. The world is changing. A couple of you are aware of my recent exposure to advanced DNA research at The Rockefeller University. Bright minds are doing for the human body what Erik Buell and a talented group of folks are doing for transportation. It's a GREAT time to be alive. You can't convince many folks on an internet board to join you, even in an imaginary trip, looking over the horizon. But . . . the visionaries . . . armed with the greatest educations, burning desire and technical quiver in history . . . are hard at work. So . . when they show you something that doesn't yet exist you have choices. You can ridicule "Doesn't look like anything I've ever seen or would buy" . . or you can be asking . . . . "hmmmmm . . maybe we can? . . what would it take?" I'm amazed. | ||
| Raceautobody |
Don't get hung up on the Hastur. The iON looks interesting. The flex axis steering catches my interest. http://www.motorbeam.com/bikes/hero-motocorp/hero- unveils-ion-hydrogen-fuell-cell-concept-at-2014-au to-expo/ (Message edited by raceautobody on February 05, 2014) | ||
| Court |
Sorry . . . I may have been a few minutes premature. Like I said, 8 months ago . . . I am prepared to be amazed. | ||
| Fast1075 |
It's 1946. Two guys from the motorpool are hanging out having a smoke. Little motorcycle comes buzzing by.  Hey! what was that? sounded like a Hummer. Naw it's one of them dern Honda things. Wow what a POS, them people won't go far with THAT thing. | ||
| Rocket_in_uk |
I'm all for the advancement of transport but like all things, it has its place. A lack of copper wire and a bluetooth system replacing wires is all well and good, but it's going to take a very long time, if ever at all, to perfect such systems to be 100% reliable. Any iPhone and a bluetooth headset is enough proof you might be left wishing you'd never given up on a wiring loom! Rocket in England | ||
| Court |
http://www.rinkworks.com/said/predictions.shtml | ||
| Court |
By the way . . . if you could see some of the things I've seen the last month at The Rockefeller University ( Ralph Steinman Lab) some rethinking would surely follow. | ||
| Trojan |
Remember I said that the 'Hero' rendering looked like a KTM? Here is a quote from KTM..... Capital goes where capital flows, and it seems that India is turning out to be both a huge market expansion and production opportunity for many manufacturers. As such Stefan Pierer, KTM’s President and CEO, says the Austrian company is considering manufacturing a 500cc and 800c parallel twin motorcycle on the subcontinent sometime in the next three years. Now tell me the Hero rendering isn't a KTM clone? The only real difference was the parralel twin engine, and KTM are going to build that as well! KTM and Bajaj (another huge volume Indian producer of cheap two wheeled transport - I hesitate to call them motorcycles) are now in partnership and Bajaj manufacturer all of the smaller capacity KTM road bikes such as the 300 Duke. | ||
| Trojan |
Anyway....enough talk of small capacity Indian monstrousities, lets get back to the subject of Superbike racing on this thread please | ||
| Reepicheep |
It has some KTM'ish elements, like the exposed tube frame. Of course to declare that a KTMish element, you have to ignore the fact that it's really a Ducati Monster element that KTM took. The angular styling is pretty KTM also, if you ignore the fact that all the Japanese sport bikes are also all origami these days. A parallel twin couldn't be further from "trying to copy KTM". KTM has singles and little VTwins. The parallel twin sitting out in my garage on a lift was a 1974 Kawasaki improvement over a 60's Triumph design, which was I suppose probably lifted from BSA or somebody. I'm really suprised KTM is going the parallel twin route... I'm not complaining, I think that is an under appreciated and under used format. I'd say it is fair to say the new Hero and the new KTM are targeted at the same marked (convergent evolution), I don't think it's fair to say one is a copy of the other. Not any more then it was be fair to say a CBR-1000 was a copy of an R1 was a copy of the GSX-R1000. | ||
| Simond |
If they wanted to avoid comparisons with KTM they shouldn't have painted it orange! | ||
| Simond |
......actually maybe that should have read....... If they wanted to avoid comparisons with KTM they wouldn't have painted it orange. Roll on Philip Island....... | ||
| Court |
>>>you have to ignore the fact that it's really a Ducati Monster element that KTM took. Atop an exhaust configuration KTM "borrowed" from Buell. I agree with Simon . . . . I'd have used a different color scheme. How cool would that look in a green and blue combination? | ||
| Classax |
Meanwhile back in the world of World Super Bike Racing... FIM and Dorna have listed Bimota as an official entrant for the 2014 season. All homologation deadlines for the Philip Island season opener have come and gone. Despite the promise of a formal announcement by the end of January by FIM officials, as of yet, no press releases from either Bimota or FIM, with regards to an amended and/or dispensational waiver for the number of manufactured machines has come forth. Could it be that the world superbike markets slowly trending upward sales figures will in turn allow Bimota to build and ship 2000 machines in 2014-15. We can only hope so, for not only is that good for racing but good for the industry as a whole, as possible sign of a strengthening global motorcycle market. | ||
| Rocket_in_uk |
Here's a quote suitable to the subject matter of advanced technologies just for you Court. "The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, and the young know everything." -- Oscar Wilde. Rocket in England | ||
| Vagelis46 |
KTM ?? No way ! It looks like a Benelli TNT to me ... So what ? | ||
| Classax |
and in other news recovering Sylvain Guintoli turned in a respectable best time of 1’42.308 during testing at Jarez. Good enough for mid pack racing last year! I really wish EBR would have tested here instead of Phillip Island. Jarez is just a better track for getting sorted on settings, its got some of everything from everywhere. (Message edited by classax on February 06, 2014) | ||
| Trojan |
Could it be that the world superbike markets slowly trending upward sales figures I don't know where you read that, but it ain't true. The Sportsbike market (both 600 and 1000cc) is in free fall and in dire straits still. Only a few market segments are in growth right now worldwide, and these are NOT sports machines. We get stats for worldwide sales in the trade press and the figures are not good no matter which country you look at. FIM and Dorna have listed Bimota as an official entrant for the 2014 season. Last I read that was a provisonal list and there was a caveat for Bimota that said 'subject to homologation'. Since then I have heard nothing so don't even think they have really begun the homologation process. Would Jarez be anywhere near Jerez in Spain? | ||
| Crusty |
Would Jarez be anywhere near Jerez in Spain? Doth I detect a true tosspot calling a kettle black in regards to grammar or spelling? (Message edited by Crusty on February 07, 2014) |
