In the car industry, the hybrid has become the most normal thing in the world, but for motorcycles, the first hybrid motorcycle has yet to be put on the market. Honda has now filed no fewer than 9 patents for various hybrid configurations.
You might not say it, but it’s been 25 years since the Toyota Prius was launched in Japan, the world’s first mass production car with hybrid drive, followed by the rest of the world 3 years later. While the reactions were initially still very skeptical, the hybrid drive has now become commonplace in the automotive industry.
In the motorcycle industry, Piaggio had the hybrid first in the summer of 2009 with the MP3 125 Hybrid, although strictly speaking it is a three-wheel scooter. A year later, a 300i variant was added, which should have come out better due to its larger displacement and higher power, but it was a big flop.
The added weight of the lithium-ion battery hybrid drive did not outweigh the benefit of the electric drive and due to space constraints the electric range was far too small, yielding no significant benefits in terms of consumption and so it died a quiet dead. In 2017, all Hybrid versions were taken out of production by Piaggio.
Now the world has changed completely since Piaggio took the Hybrid out of production five years ago. The European Union wanted a total ban on cars with a combustion engine from 2030, but has adjusted that plan under pressure from the German government (there will now be a ban on combustion engines that run on fossil fuels), while electric and hybrids are now slowly being adopted in the motor industry as well. starting to get going.
Kawasaki was the first manufacturer to roll out an HEV and EV plan at last year’s EICMA in Milan, with two first EV motorcycles still planned for 2023 – the Z EV and the Ninja EV, which we now know as Z e1 and Ninja e1 will go through life. In addition to the two EV models, a Ninja Hybrid and a hydrogen Ninja were also presented.
Kawasaki’s Ninja HEV hybrid engine is expected in 2024 according to the timetable presented. The Ninja HEV can operate fully electrically in the city, as a combustion engine when you’re touring or a combination of both, where the electric drive serves as an additional support for the combustion engine to generate extra power. Control is via buttons on the steering wheel and a semi-automatic transmission should enable the seamless transition from electric to combustion engine.
However, the system that Honda has now patented is much more complex than that. Honda has opted for not one, but two electric motors in combination with the combustion engine, along with a planetary gear gearbox and a multi-ratio transmission. The designs show the outline of two possible internal combustion engines: one similar to the 750cc used in the X-ADV and NC750 range and a smaller version – possibly a single cylinder.
Honda connects the two electric motors and the combustion engine via a planetary gear mechanism, a so-called Epicyclic gearbox, in a layout that seems to have many similarities with the transmission used by Toyota in the 1997 Prius. There is no coupling between the engine and transmission, the planetary gear mechanism allows for driving in different configurations (EV, ICE or a combination thereof).
One of the two electric motors is connected to the reduction set that drives the front sprocket, so that it always turns when the rear wheel rolls and can therefore serve as a generator to generate power, but also as a motor to provide extra power. The system creates a CVT drive, which has the advantage that the combustion engine can always run at the optimum speed, the speed is controlled by the electric motor.
Whether this complex system will find its way into production in the future remains to be seen, there are certainly advantages to it, but it is quite a complex system that also takes up a lot of space, so the area of ​​application is probably closer to a touring bike than a sporty Naked . However, a hybrid upgrade of the NC range is certainly possible.
– Thanks for information from Motorfreaks.