Yamaha to Offer Electric Street Bikes by 2016. Yamaha PES1 and Yamaha PED1. First Yamaha electric motorcycle.
The electric street bike is a concept that has been around for years, I would say even decades. And as petrol prices still are on an ascending wave and while we don't know how much longer will petrol can be used as usable form of gas, motorcycle manufactures as car manufactures, some with more passion that others, have been looking for alternatives and already some smaller companies are offering full electric bikes with more or less success. Bigger companies have not been very keen to a full electric bike and some companies like Piaggio have opted to go for a more accepted way and did a hybrid motorcycle known as Piaggio MP3 Hybrid, which is not available on Singapore, only on the European and US market. We all know that hybrid cars are present Singapore since the Toyota Prius opened the road nearly a decade ago and by now most manufactures have a line or two of hybrid vehicles but the same has not occurred on motorcycles. Sure, manufactures have made their engines a lot more efficient and fuel efficient than they were five years ago, but no bigger brand has ever take the step to produce or hint at producing an electric street bike, until now.
Yamaha is decided to become the first big Japanese manufacture to produce an electric street bike. They unveiled their concept models the Yamaha PES1 and the Yamaha PED1 (which stands for “Passion, Electric, Street” and “Passion, Electric, Dirt”) on Tokyo Motor Show on 2013, nobody took it very seriously as in the past other companies made similar things, KTM announced a concept electric street bike three years ago, but we haven't hear anything new, but Yamaha has announced recently that they are decided to produce their very first electric street bike by saying on the yearly report “In sports motorcycles, we are working to create new value with EV sports motorcycles, which we aim to launch in two years, with the development of the small, on-road sports PES1, as well as the PED1, which are being developed to expand the scope of electric vehicles to the off-road world. In addition to the advantages of being electrically powered, these motorcycles will offer the operability expected by existing motorcycle fans, together with a new riding experience.” It's expected that the models will hit the streets on 2016. Which will be the first Yamaha electric motorcycle.
Very little is known of the inner details of this future Yamaha electric street bikes but the few details that have arisen makes them very interesting. First, their weight seems to be very light, the Yamaha PES1 weighted less than 100kg and the Yamaha PED1 weighted less than 85 kg, they seem to have same central chassis and brushless DC motor with a small, fast recharge and swappable, lithium-ion battery and a top speed of 62mph (105 kmh) for the Yamaha PES1 model, their transmission can be switched between automatic and manual and it's said to have the capacity to connect with smartphone to provide several features.
The use of a small battery will surely help a lot on pricing, but the details are still unknown. If they manage to provide a decent autonomy and decent price we believe this can be a model that will be remembered by future ages as the first model that changed everything. Time will tell.
See the video presentation of the Yamaha PES1. The first Yamaha electric motorcycle: