Technology

The search for alternative fuels to carbon-based products is throwing up some interesting ideas, not all of which are pie-in-the-sky.

The Wankel engine should have revolutionised the automobile and motorcycle industries. Instead, it killed nearly every manufacturer who tried to use it. Why?

It’s time for the topspeed.com 2021 motorcycle awards. Today, we look at new tech that’s found its way onto motorcycles.

CEO of oddly named Damon, manufacturer of electric motorcycles, wants there to be zero collision­ related fatalities with Damon products by 2030. Is that possible?

Hub-centre steering is one of the few departures from traditional motorcycle chassis engineering that has been paid more than lip service. Bimota still uses the technology but is it just another engineering dead-end?

When a manufacturer known for its screaming three- and four-cylinder engines and multiple Grand Prix World Championships makes a big thing out of a launch of an e-Scooter, then you know things will never be the same again.

At the dawn of the modern era of Japanese motorcycles, the four-cylinder inline engine was king, but that didn’t stop Suzuki going off at a tangent with a rotary-engined bike.

If you are selling millions of motorcycles every year, then you need production facilities like no other. It’s tempting to think of Indian companies such as Hero as operating out of Victorian-style factories, with little or no technology but, as these videos show, maybe we should reassess that assumption.

ABS is now as much a part of the motorcycling landscape as chain final drive and has contributed enormously to motorcycle safety. BMW was the first manufacturer to fit it to a production motorcycle but, in fact, it was initially developed by the young aircraft industry.

While there is some resistance to the wholesale adoption of electric bikes, the avenue of Hybrid technology has strangely not been explored by motorcycle manufacturers, despite it being popular in cars. Could Kawasaki be about to change all that, adopting it supercharging technology?

Bike theft is always a worry but this latest tracker unit by Monimoto is easily installed by anyone and has impressive battery life to keep your pride and joy safe.

Triumph’s bid to turn the Tiger 1200 into the best adventure bike on the planet is revealed to be on track with the news that the engine will gain a T-plane crankshaft which offers the best all-round performance.

We all know that MotoGP bikes are the pinnacle of motorcycle engineering and the riders who tame them are the superheroes of the sport. They can reach 210mph on the straights but it is their performance in the corners that stretches credulity.

The sound a Harley Davidson engine produces is one that can be traced right back to the very beginning of the company. Fondly referred to as ’potato-potato’, this video shows how little the sound has changed from the very first F-Head right through to the Milwaukee Eight of the present day.

It’s one of those phrases that people throw out into conversations - ’Oh, yeah, the Yamaha R1: it’s got a cross-plane engine’ - and you just know they have no idea what that means. So, what does it mean?

Whilst there have been many ideas in motorcycling that have been brilliant, there are plenty that have been complete dead-ends. That didn’t stop the manufacturers pursuing them, however.

A short film about the development of the spark plug, that small but essential part of the combustion process in an engine. No one part of an engine is indispensable but some are more important than others. If you think about it, a spark plug has to work perfectly many tens of millions of times in extreme conditions of heat. Thus, they are fantastic feats of engineering. This film traces the development from Etienne Lenoir’s spark-ignition engine of 1858 to the present day.

Honda believes it is responsible for the safety of all its drivers and riders and is introducing new tech that will prevent collisions between cars and bikes. The Japanese company wants it to be fitted to all its new models by 2050, which might be possible in developed countries but raises questions about emerging countries where a vast majority of its products are sold. As many of these are in the budget range, is it viable to fit expensive tech to them?

In what looks like an ingenious solution to a problem that never existed, Honda has filed a patent application for electronic actuation of the clutch, obviating the need for a clutch cable. Is it needed?

Ever at the leading edge of ride-quality and -control electronics, Ducati once again earns its reputation with the Connected Intelligence bundle that touches on every important facet and delivers multiple personalities not just for the engine, but much of the rest of the bike as well. Let’s take a look at the guts of the thing, shall we?

Triumph announces a new essential component of motorcycle safety equipment. The Triumph SOS app, specifically tailored for motorcyclists, and monitors sensors in your smartphone to detect and validate an accident and then request emergency services, even if you can’t.

Technology is advancing at a dizzy pace, allowing all sorts of new systems to be fitted to motorcycles. But are they always a good thing? Often, it feels as if technology is being adopted for adoption’s sake without the bigger issues being evaluated. Adaptive cruise control using radar might work well in cars, but on a motorcycle, it could potentially encourage the rider to take less notice of the road ahead, which we can ill-afford to do.