Honda blew minds with the V3 Concept that uses an electric supercharger to boost intake pressure. Why an electric supercharger? Why a V-3 layout? How much power could it make? How much electric power would the supercharger use? How could perfectly constant boost or instantly variable boost be used to improve the riding experience? So many questions about this incredibly interesting concept--AND Honda says it is headed for production. Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer talk about the many possibilities and try to answer all the questions. Kevin even dons a virtual wizard hat...
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SportsTranscript
00:00We are back with another episode of the Cycleworld podcast. I'm Mark Hoyer,
00:04Editor-in-Chief, and I'm with Kevin Cameron, our Technical Editor. This week's
00:10topic is a topical topic. Of course, the Milan Motorcycle Show just happened in
00:15EICMA not too long ago, and it's a spectacular look at what's coming in
00:202025 and beyond. There are tons of production bikes, but also concept bikes,
00:24and one of the most interesting to me and Kevin, and therefore the topic of
00:29this show, is Honda's mystery V3 prototype with the electric supercharging.
00:34So basically what we had was a V3, two cylinders in the front, one in the rear,
00:38trellis frame, and not a whole lot else. But on top of it was an electric
00:44supercharger. And what I love about this is so is it's a this is such a Honda
00:50move. They've done so many technical explorations over time, just crazy
00:55interesting stuff, decade after decade, and I'm happy to see them messing around
01:01with this because I think of the possibilities here. What do you think of
01:06the possibilities, Kevin? Well, we all saw automobile engines getting smaller,
01:14particularly in Europe, and then recovering the lost performance with a
01:20turbocharger. And on automobiles, a turbocharger is not a real handicap in
01:29the sense that motorcycle, turbo motorcycles have never made it on the
01:35street. They've been produced, but their torque characteristics are so sudden that
01:43they never caught on. Meanwhile, people in other industries have been using
01:52electric compressors, electric driven blowers. For example, large commercial
02:03shipping, they often will use excess electric power to drive their air supply
02:10for the big two-stroke diesel engines. And in Formula One, there have been
02:15situations in which they could either use excess exhaust flow to generate
02:21electricity, or they could use electricity to spin up a what is like the
02:27cold section of a turbocharger, a small centrifugal compressor. Well, around
02:342014, Honda tried one of these electrically driven superchargers on a
02:42Pikes Peak hill climb NSX automobile. I don't know what the result of that was,
02:49win place or just plain lose, but it showed that they were digging and
02:56delving, looking at new ideas, trying to see Pikes Peak is high, therefore air
03:02density is low, therefore you need something to restore that density, namely
03:07an air compressor. So what could Honda be up to with this? Well, it's a fascinating
03:18case. And we wonder about a lot of things with respect to this. Why three
03:22cylinders? Why not one of the more up-to-the-minute parallel twins, which
03:29are so much the center of the market these days. So then we can read up on
03:38these electric superchargers. It turns out that according to outfits like
03:44Mitsubishi, that from stopped to 90% of maximum rotor RPM can take as little as
03:54a quarter of a second. Oh, get out. That's awesome. So I think this is a good
03:59time to stop and talk about how a standard turbo works or a
04:05centrifugal supercharger like used on the Kawasaki H2. The H2 supercharger to
04:12make its boost is driven off the crankshaft. So it's dependent on engine
04:15RPM directly through gearing or belt or chain, whatever it is. And at low RPM, you
04:23don't have as much boost, but at high RPM and when I say high RPM, 10 times the
04:28engine RPM roughly. So you're spinning the Kawasaki's centrifugal supercharger
04:32spins at 130,000 RPM at its peak. Yep. And it, but it's dependent on engine RPM
04:39just as with the turbo and a turbos in some ways, I mean, turbos have been made
04:43to work exceptionally well, especially in cars, as you point out in motorcycles.
04:49Side story, my friend, Paul, his dad said, Hey, yeah, you can, you can get a
04:55motorcycle, but it can't be bigger than a 750. And so what did he do as a 16 year
05:00old? He got a Kawasaki GPZ 750 turbo. So go turbos. But the problem with the turbo
05:08is you got to wait for pressure to build. You have to have exhaust pressure to
05:12spin the drive to power the cold section. And that doesn't happen instantaneously.
05:18And so that's the advantage of an electric supercharger as you just described quarter
05:23second. Yeah. The electric, the electric has maximum torque at zero RPM. So whereas
05:31the turbocharger, the engine is barely putting out a little bit of exhaust as you
05:36along the, your urban haunts. And when you see the enemy and it's necessary to deploy
05:44maximum deploy maximum power, you turn the throttle, but there's very little exhaust gas.
05:50So it doesn't accelerate the turbine very rapidly. And the turbine is not massless.
05:57It takes time to stuff that exhaust gas through there and get the turbine spun up so that the
06:03compressor can start, you know, it's a bootstrap operation. So what European automakers have done
06:10with this is they have added the turbo or the E supercharger as they're so tediously calling it,
06:18the electric supercharger to make up for the problems of the turbo. Because of course the
06:26turbo is desirable because it doesn't take power from the crankshaft or from the alternator as the
06:33electric supercharger must. Well, I think that's the advantage of that, that two stages. You don't
06:37have to make the electric motor huge because you're not relying on it for the peak boost condition.
06:43Yes. You're just helping it get there. So you can make your wires smaller. You can have a smaller
06:47motor that that turbo can be, if it isn't the same turbo, it could be smaller if there were two.
06:55So we should be careful with our nomenclature here because turbo or turbocharger
07:04is a contraction of the original expression turbo supercharger, meaning that you have a turbine
07:11driven by the exhaust on the same shaft as a centrifugal supercharger, which is pressurizing
07:19the intake system. And aircraft in World War II designed to operate at very high altitude,
07:25such as B-17, B-29, B-24, P-47, all had these devices on them because they could restore
07:35lost air density at high altitude. So I want to use the term e-charger or electrical supercharger,
07:50which I'm dealing with too many syllables, to distinguish from something that is exhaust driven,
07:56because anything that is turbo is exhaust driven, namely it has a turbine as its source of power.
08:04Great point.
08:05So the idea that the Europeans came up with was while we're waiting for the turbo to spool,
08:12the electric will supply the initial rise in manifold pressure that will get our heavy SUV
08:23and its precious cargo moving. So that's one way to look at it. Another application that they're
08:32talking about quite a bit now is operating fuel cell systems at elevated pressure and using
08:39electric superchargers to supply that pressure. It's just like the old Velox boiler,
08:48or I should say firebox. Normally a firebox of a steam system is at atmospheric pressure,
08:57but you could supercharge it and get much more intense heat release. And that was the Velox
09:05system. So in this case...
09:08That's how we start the barbecue at my house.
09:11Get a hairdryer on the chimney of coals and let it rip.
09:14Let it rip. My wife puts a lot of paper in the firebox, lights it off and gets the chimney going.
09:20So yes, that's her compressor. So we come back to the motorcycle case and we're thinking to
09:33ourselves, well, automobile people are saying we want to run smaller engines because they have so
09:42much less friction and most of the time is spent at less than 10 or 15% throttle. But for those
09:49moments when you want to be wafted up the entrance ramp to the freeway in record time, we're going to
09:59have to increase the air density on the intake side, which means a turbocharger in the old days.
10:06But imagine that this three-cylinder is, as we were assured from Japanese sources,
10:13end of quote, that this is an 850, this triple that's being shown at EICMA or that was shown.
10:20And for a few dollars more, we can add enough extra supercharger pressure to this to make it
10:32perform like it has four cylinders instead of three. That's one way of looking at the beginnings
10:39of what this project could provide, namely a lightweight middleweight three-cylinder motorcycle,
10:48compact, easy to maneuver, not a power station on wheels like the big four-cylinder superbikes were,
10:59but our lightweight motorcycle has superbike power.
11:05So okay, what's the bill? One car installation, the whole rig is 22 pounds.
11:13So for the motorcycle case, and you look at the illustrations from EICMA, and this whole thing
11:20is tucked up right behind the steering head in the front part of the frame. And the output from
11:27the blower connects straight into the airbox over the three throttle bodies. So this is not a bulk
11:43not a bulky system, but it is eliminating all that hot pipe work. Imagine having to bring a hot
11:49exhaust pipe from the rear cylinder, hot exhaust pipes from the front cylinder, to some compromised
11:56location where we put a turbocharger. We don't want to burn our legs. We don't want to burn the
12:01passenger's legs. And we don't want to have to carry 40 pounds of insulation to keep that from
12:09happening. So here is this cool running device up behind the steering head, compact. All it is,
12:19is the cold section from a turbocharger. And you've seen some of the motorcycle units,
12:24they're just itty-bitty little things. And there's an electric motor connected to it.
12:30And one of the types of electric motor that is most frequently mentioned is a switched reluctance
12:37motor, which has no permanent magnets and no windings on the rotating armature. It is just a
12:46stack of iron laminations. Its whole purpose is to conduct flux from one pole of the stator
12:56to the diametric pole. And the way the power supply for this motor works is it
13:04generates a rotating magnetic field among three poles, six poles, three phases. That field spins
13:17at whatever speed the thing achieves. And it stays in sync because it has timing devices on the
13:28rotor that tell the computer that's directing this orchestra what the angular position of the
13:35rotor is, so that they know what to do with the rotating field. Sounds complicated, but it's just
13:42an electric motor that goes whoop! That's instant. As you said, it's a quarter of a second, and that's
13:48the beauty of it, for one. Because what we're doing is we're boosting the engine size, but we're
13:55getting the torque rheostat that we always want. We're getting a predictable, abundant torque curve,
14:02which is all we've ever really kind of wanted. Now, remember that modern motorcycle of throttle
14:10by wire treats the rider's throttle angle, alpha, as a torque demand. It doesn't say the rider wants
14:20the throttle plates open 22 degrees. Or that he wants it to bog at 4500.
14:29And so what the system could do is it could say our target pressure for the airbox is x,
14:38and it could hold it there. Always. Yes. Or we could say we could have an active system where
14:49the pressure in the airbox is constantly varying according to demand. Who knows what
14:54they'll find to work best. Well, imagine the torque curve, the plateau that you could make
15:00near electric. Because you could boost it more at low, and then you could dial it back, and you could
15:05just have... So many wonderful possibilities, yes. Imagine if we had to sleep on the torque
15:13curves of yesteryear. Would that be a comfortable night's sleep, that big hump,
15:19and sometimes a couple of teeth sticking up? Oh, multiple humps, yep.
15:25Gotta see my backcracker right away. 98 Yamaha R1. It was awesome, but it had too big. It was like a
15:34camel's back. So there was a first one, you're like, oh, that's pretty good. And then it would
15:38wane, and then the second one came, and up with the front every time. Yep. Well, of course,
15:44the old timers will say, in my day, we were proud of our ability to manage difficulties like that.
15:51But today, public opinion may be generated by bots. So everything changes every five minutes.
16:00Fascinating stuff. So I think that these people are onto something.
16:08One of the car people says our... I think this was Mitsubishi Technical Review,
16:15says our unit can operate for 30 seconds at five kilowatts, which is like six or seven horsepower.
16:25And it can operate continuously at three kilowatts. Now, if you look at the photographs
16:34from EICMA, you will see two barbed liquid connectors pointing forward out of the motor
16:40side of this unit. Are those water cooling lines by any chance? Well, we just don't know.
16:49So this is going to be permanent Easter egg hunt time, because we don't know what they're going to
16:59do, but we can see that there are some fascinating possibilities. And it is those possibilities that
17:04have people like ourselves talking about this exciting prototype. Yeah. Well, as you pointed
17:12out in our conversation, five PSI of supercharger or turbo boost, you boost power by roughly one
17:19third. Yeah. So that's pretty darn good. Now there's an outfit in Kenilworth, UK,
17:31called Aristech, A-E-R-I-S-T-E-C-H. And they make an electric supercharger that looks a lot like the
17:41one on this prototype. And it even has barbed liquid connectors sticking out of it. So there's
17:50more to think of here. Well, Kevin's been poking around as ever. Poking around. Yeah, that's awesome.
17:57But on the one hand, there's the possibility of wonderful performance. Because for example,
18:06these units have been used on small car engines at 2.5 bar, which means essentially they're cramming
18:17the air of an engine two and a half times bigger than the engine actually is into it. And if you
18:27burn two and a half times as much mixture, you're going to make two and a half times as the power.
18:32So the possibility of little economy car, 80 horsepower jobs, making 200, 250 horsepower.
18:45Well, that could get your attention too, if it were in a motorcycle.
18:51So why not just let the sky be the limit? Let's boost it up. Oh, big problem.
18:59The more you boost, the closer the engine runs toward detonation, which is the destructive form
19:05of combustion that can nibble at the edges of your pistons and cause you to walk,
19:17to get healthy exercise. So when operating engines at high boost, to avoid detonation,
19:25knock, ping, we reduce the compression ratio. Now when we're cruising the boulevard,
19:34we're riding a very inefficient motorcycle because it has the compression ratio of 1950.
19:42And that raises fuel consumption.
19:45Can't have that. So this is a reason to limit the amount of boost that we send to our engine,
19:55because we don't want to have to run reduced compression and suffer worse fuel consumption...
20:04around town or at the usual 10 to 15% throttle opening.
20:10But a system like this invites a person to say, does this Aeristec outfit make
20:22a range of sizes of these electric blowers? I wonder if the next size would fit into this space.
20:30So this is not the hot-rodding of our youth, which had all to do with gears and belts and
20:42chains. It's electrical, digitally controlled, most likely, and not bulky. I remember seeing
20:55pictures of early roadsters, supercharged roadsters, with the whole 671 blower sticking
21:05up out of the top of the engine compartment so that the driver had to be over here in order to
21:13see in front because the thing was so huge. Here's this lovely little package. Mind you,
21:19the automotive one, 22 pounds, this little package tucked up behind the steering head
21:26fits nicely there. Have a look at the photos on the internet.
21:33So you talked a couple of times about the Mitsubishi unit that is running seven-ish
21:41horsepower. We probably don't need that much horsepower, but the question would be raised.
21:47We're going to need electric power. We're going to need some big copper cables,
21:52and we're going to need a generating system that will work with this. When I read our
21:59contributor Ben Purvis' story, it caused me to think of the Honda Goldwing,
22:05which has a really clever, the current Honda Goldwing, very clever starter generator unit,
22:11integrated starter generator, ISG, and it's a ring, and it's on the crank,
22:17and it does both functions. So when you hit the starter button,
22:21there's no messing around. It just immediately rotates a flat six to life. It just goes,
22:27bang, and it's running, and the maximum output of that system is 120 amps, which is going to be
22:36plenty. Times 12 is the watts. So that's 1440, 1440 watts, which will probably run this system
22:47straight out. Now, the other point that's made is that they want to reduce the amount of
22:57heating that occurs in the windings, because the limiting, the thing that limits electric motors
23:04in continuous operation is the temperature of the insulation on the wiring.
23:10Now, electrical resistance, resistance heating is equal to the current squared
23:20times the resistance, and by going to a 48-volt system, they cut the current by 75%.
23:29So that's why the Europeans are advocating these 48-volt systems, because it will enable this kind
23:39of technology to be just plugged in and run, and there's no reason why a motorcycle can't have a
23:4748-volt battery and a 48-volt system altogether. So yes, it'll require changes, but that's why
23:59we have flexible production lines and lovely five-axis CNC machines. What do you want?
24:07I yearn to serve you. Oh, gosh, 3D printing. How many YouTube channels are dedicated to
24:14folks with 3D printers making funny little parts? And, you know, gosh, I watch that stuff with my
24:21son. He's fascinated. It's really cool. The flexibility and the ability to just change
24:27things, do things, mill things, you know, it makes my old manual lathe look ridiculous sometimes.
24:35But the lathe can hold a lot closer dimension, and plus we know that the metal 3D printing
24:44often suffers considerably in terms of fatigue strength, because it is basically what a bee does
24:51in creating the honeycomb. It adds a blob, it adds another blob, it adds another blob.
24:58So it is a stack of welded blobs. Yeah, not forged. Yeah. So they're improving that. I'm sure that
25:09they'll find ways to eliminate those problems or greatly reduce them, but those problems do exist.
25:18I wonder if you could just run electric current, just the right amount of electric current through
25:22the part after it's been deposited. Just enough. Yeah. Well, then there was hipping,
25:28hot isostatic processing, hot isostatic pressing, pardon me. A hipped part begins life as dust,
25:39and the dust is sintered into a high-density preform, and then it goes into this high-pressure
25:50heated chamber, and it is simultaneously heated and compressed until the result can be a
25:57high-pressure turbine disc for a jet engine, for example. And in that case, there are lots of little
26:04pieces which have been joined by lots of little junctions, and they end up with something that
26:09does not immediately start squeaking crack on dotted line. So we have an 850 triple.
26:21I'm going to ask you why you think... Well, notionally, yeah. Notionally 850, definitely a triple.
26:29I think, too, a good running triple on the market now, which is the Yamaha MT-09. Yes. About 110
26:36horsepower. So if we boost that by a third, it's 143, which has got my attention. And it's 143
26:43horsepower, probably with an incredibly flat torque curve because it can be manipulated by
26:49boost and by throttle position. And then in a motorcycle that's going to be competitively
26:59weighted because it isn't a big four-cylinder, so it's going to have the power of that very
27:04lightweight triple. Yamaha is a very lightweight bike these days out of the factory. So you're
27:10going to have something that's 400 and it's like 4 to 410 pounds, probably 415. Obviously, we're
27:17making all this up as we go along. We're just theorizing. That's what we're doing. Kevin's not
27:21wearing his wizard hat, but it's there. So it's just, it's so enticing. It's so enticing to think
27:30of a lightweight, handy motorcycle like that with a big, fat wad of torque and 143 horsepower.
27:38Yes, because imagine that you tuned the 850 to make that increased power.
27:45That means that you have to use longer cam timings. Away goes bottom end. You have to go
27:51to larger ducts and larger valves. Forget the mid-range. And you end up with something like
27:58the classic, exciting to ride 600 supersport bikes. Be, be, be as you shift your way to glory.
28:08Now, a lot of people love that experience, but in focus group after focus group and including
28:17asking professional racers, what everyone really wants is that flat torque curve.
28:25They don't want mountain peaks. I came across a guy. I was going to a dealer show years ago in Las Vegas.
28:34And I stopped to get gas on the way in the middle of the desert. And a guy rolls up on a Yamaha R6.
28:39And this was the very high RPM R6. Yes. And I, you know, I can't help when I see people riding
28:46motorcycles, I want to talk to them and ask them questions. Why are you doing it? Why'd you pick
28:49this bike? Why are you wearing that helmet? Whatever it is, I like to chit chat. And I went over and I
28:54said, Hey, what do you think of your R6? He's like, Oh yeah, I like it. You know, it's, it's,
28:58it is super fast and it's steers great. I'm like, Oh cool. What'd you have before that? And he said,
29:04Oh, I had a 636, the Kawasaki with the big bore 600 engine and fat torque. He's like, yeah,
29:13sometimes I kind of wish I'd kept that bike. And here he is riding across the desert, you know,
29:18like the R6 was an incredible motorcycle, really great on the track, but man, there was not a lot
29:23of mid range and again, great on the track, but man, when you're just squeezing around town or
29:28you're just kind of droning along on the freeway, man, three down shifts, if you really want to get
29:32it, that's what you got to do on an R6. And then on the 636, it was also softer. I mean, it was
29:37a much, you know, the marketing or say the concept of the design was much softer, bigger, fatter
29:42seat. You know, the R6 was like a racer replica to the ultimate and the 636 was an admission
29:49or an acknowledgement, let's call it an acknowledgement of Kawasaki that
29:53we ride these things on the street almost all the time. And so they just kick, you know,
29:58kick the displacement up and soften it up. It was a great street bike and he had his regrets. And we
30:02do want that on a day-to-day basis. It gets, you know, it can be very stimulating, but also
30:08sometimes you just want to get where you're going and have a little bit of torque. Laudable goals.
30:15Yes, they are laudable goals. Yes.
30:19You know, I can think of for a triple, for a V engine, I can see just as with the V5
30:28in MotoGP, you're getting three cylinders at the front, which gives you weight bias to the front.
30:35And then you get two cylinders in the back, which gives you narrowness for the rider and packaging.
30:40And that's the same situation we're seeing on this V3 here.
30:45So we're getting the width of a twin, presumably close to the width of a twin.
30:50And that one cylinder at the back, we don't have to worry about turbo plumbing, as you point out.
30:55I'm kind of curious, like why not just use a parallel twin is what I'm wondering. I'm wondering
30:59what drove Honda to do a V3. And I wondered if you had any ideas about that. I don't really. I
31:06played with ideas. For example, three cylinder has a lovely and very attractive musical exhaust
31:14note. And that's a point. Well, all the manufacturers are paying attention to that.
31:26They had someone in their engineering team at Indian with musical background
31:31working on the gear mesh so that it would be euphonious, thirds and fifths.
31:38Yamaha has talked about using the musical side of the business to help with the sound of their
31:47engines. So there's, and Harley has built an empire on the old potato, potato,
31:54old potato, potato. Yes. You know, look, sound and feel. And so I think it is, you know, I had
32:01lunch. I took a ride with Ray Blank, then the boss of Honda in America. And I had ridden the
32:10CB1000R in Europe and a really nice bike, not the highest performance, but
32:18he had a relationship with it. It sounded great and it had a really nice look and it had a nice
32:23suspension and we were eating. This is a long time ago. He says, well, I think what you're
32:27going to see, you know, for us paraphrasing for us, you know, it was flames out of the tailpipe
32:33and last year plus 7%, you know, we just wanted all the performance all the time. And that's how,
32:40that's how it was. You know, that's why we got all these incredible sport bikes and that's why we are
32:44where we are today. But at that time you say the, the way people feel about the motorcycle
32:50in the future is going to be so much more important. And so you, you once said, oh, well,
32:55you know we did a story, I think it was called why twins? Why now? You said, you said the drone
33:03of a 180 inline four only appeals to a soulless technician such as myself or something like that.
33:12And I was like, Hey, you know, you are a technician, but I've never known you to be
33:16soulless. Um, but triples do sound damn good. And, uh, yeah. And it, you know,
33:22and Honda's got a background too. So you had a, yeah, you had a second point.
33:26R1, um, with the 90 degree crank pin spacing borrowed from the M1 motor GP engine has a
33:35V8 sound that is quite different and instantly distinguishable from a flat crank inline four.
33:44So I think we can say that there is a sound war, sound quality, a music war going on for the, uh,
33:57attention of the motorcycle buyer because parallel twins have their crank pins at 90 degrees. So that
34:05instead of the flat drone of a 650 triumph from years ago, there is a Ducati like syncopation
34:14to the sound. Well, triumphs a great example of that because the Bonneville,
34:18the original Bonneville of 2001 had a 360 degree crank and that appealed to
34:27hundreds of older buyers in the past. But when you're seeking that broad market, they all found,
34:34you know, running to that, that spacing that essentially mimics 90 degree, uh, appealed to
34:40a really wide audience. And that's mostly what we're getting with parallel twins now, as you point out.
34:46So, um, that's a, that's one possibility. Um, I don't think that this one cylinder coming to the
34:54rear rather than having an inline triple in the front is, is, you know, the widest thing on the
35:00motorcycle is the rider. That's always going to be the case. So not in case of the CBX, I mean,
35:07come on. Yeah, true. In line six, cross the bike pretty wide. Yes, sir. Um, another thing of course
35:20is they're going to need to put a, uh, an alternator on this thing that's capable. And it may
35:27be, as you say, a motor generator as on Goldwing, uh, that provides that instant start.
35:37And there's no problem with making compact 48 volt batteries. It's been done for years.
35:45So the 48 volts will make it possible to have even smaller starters. Well, what you say there
35:53makes it interests me so much because our goal seems to be making a lighter, more compact
36:02motorcycle perform like a bigger motorcycle. That seems to be the goal here. Yeah. But you could,
36:10you could also say, use the starter generator, especially with 48 volts as a kind of a hybrid
36:19situation. I suppose you could, if you were willing to carry a heavy battery.
36:23You just had to, you'd have to put more, more battery into it. Yeah.
36:26The battery in a Prius is like 150 pounds, I think. Um, and that allows you what to go four
36:34miles just on battery power. The purpose of a hybrid is to run on electric power in those range
36:46in those operating ranges where the internal combustion engine is especially inefficient.
36:53And that is at small throttle openings. Uh, and also, um, pumping losses. Yes. Pumping loss.
37:03We're trying to working hard to create manifold vacuum. So, uh, we could speculate
37:13on and on about this, but imagine this sit down at your laptop and type the power curve you want.
37:27Talk about engine mode used to be, there was a normal rain and sport.
37:35Hmm. What are we going to call all the different modes that we could create?
37:44We're going to have to hire a specialist firm.
37:50So there are so many possibilities here. It, it, uh,
37:55it really makes you feel good about the vitality of the motorcycle concept.
38:01Because of course the attitude of parents was always, well, of course, you'll have to get rid
38:06of it. That's what my parents told me. And I said, yeah, but it's only a little thing.
38:13Oh, it's a 750 dad. It's a 750 turbo. That's what I took when I told him I got an RD 400
38:20Daytona special as my first street motorcycle. And my parents had no idea. I'm like, oh, it's
38:24just a 400. I mean, nevermind, you know, Tommy Crawford pipes and all this stuff that I did to
38:29it. And it was probably making 55 horsepower or something. 50 horse. Yeah. It ran great.
38:36They had no idea. Thank goodness. Of course I did total the bike. So maybe I should've,
38:41should've dialed her back a little bit. First high side. Maybe we can avoid that with a,
38:46with a highly controlled boost.
38:49That sound of your helmet grinding against the pavement. Can I take it back? Nope. It's too late
38:56friend. Well, that's the pilot expression. Can we just take the last five minutes over?
39:04It's not an unreasonable request, but it's not an unreasonable request.
39:08You know, uh, you were talking just, just a second ago when you said, uh, what,
39:12what are we going to call all the modes? It reminded me of, of, uh, talking with Eric Buell,
39:19Tony Stefanelli and others, uh, during the EBR, you know, the EBR 1190, uh, RX era. Yep. We're,
39:27we're doing the EBR 1190 RX era. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,
39:35Yeah.
39:35And we were talking about, um, they wanted to know what we thought of the bike,
39:38like on a conference call. So we had this call and, um, I said, fellows, you have 17
39:46levels of traction control, 17, like is I'm all for like handing it over, but that seems
39:53like a lot of levels. And they were like, well, you know, where we tried to think of everyone
39:58And they were like, well, you know, we, we tried to think of everyone cause they were
40:03Wisconsin base, you know?
40:05And uh, so we try to think of everyone, we, we, uh, we want to think of that guy trying
40:10to get his last ride of the year in, in Wisconsin, it's winter, it's November, it's after Thanksgiving
40:15and he just got a little bit of, just got a little bit of warmer weather, but it's turned
40:21and there's sleet coming down, freezing rain and he's got to get home.
40:24Yep.
40:2617 levels of traction control.
40:27And I said, fair enough, man, we do a lot of testing out here in California and just
40:32seemed like a lot.
40:33Yep.
40:34Well, that's, uh, but I'm, I'm quite serious about that notion of a, of a, a you, you type
40:43it up, uh, torque curve because, uh, atmospheric pressure is one of the variables in, uh, that
40:54make up horsepower, RPM, displacement, and stroke average combustion pressure being the
41:01other three, um, motorcycle makes more power, uh, at sea level than it does at the top of
41:11Pike's peak.
41:13So going the other way, we say, well, we'll blow a little extra pressure into that airbox.
41:18Oh, look, the lid is bulging.
41:20It's leaking.
41:21We're not here.
41:22Yeah.
41:23And we're not, but we're not relying on resonance, right?
41:25We're not relying on, we're not relying.
41:28We have not built an organ pipe that plays only one note, which the 600 sport bike was
41:34approaching.
41:36It was carrying out what Rob Muzzy said so many years ago, the harder you tune on a four
41:43stroke, the more it comes to resemble a two stroke because a two stroke is dependent upon
41:49the resonance in its exhaust pipe.
41:53And when you make the four stroke dependent upon valve overlap, exhaust pipe length, megaphone
41:59dimensions, intake length, you're creating a resonator at once again, like a two stroke.
42:07So let's make power from pressure rather than from RPM.
42:13That's another lesson that this teaches.
42:16This will allow us to make high performance, even though we're making the bores smaller
42:22and the stroke longer in order to be ready for Euro six.
42:29So one thing is we didn't.
42:30So what we're talking about is, is using the pressure wave in the exhaust and the pressure
42:35wave on the intake, Helmholtz resonators and things that would help airbox help put more
42:45air in the cylinder when you want it in there and help not get emissions to come out the
42:50exhaust system.
42:51And with this, you get rid of that.
42:53So go, you can go listen to the acoustic supercharging episode that we did, which was about the two
43:00stroke expansion chamber.
43:01And it's focused on two strokes, but it's relevant to what you were saying about four
43:05strokes, especially hard tuning them to get more power.
43:09So you can talk about that.
43:10But here, here we are stuffing it in.
43:13We don't have to like, we don't have to worry about that.
43:16That was a question.
43:17So a question I had related to emissions, which was your last point, was three cylinders
43:25instead of two for the displacement so that the ring area in each cylinder is shorter
43:32and we'd have less.
43:33I'm thinking, I'm looking at it from the standpoint that three is going to have less than a four
43:38cylinder.
43:39Fair enough.
43:42So we don't know what plan may lie behind this.
43:48To make a V3 engine is a substantial investment.
43:54It doesn't look like it's a CNC special so far.
44:00Yeah.
44:01Clearly it's two cams, I mean, double overhead cam.
44:06And at the end, at the end of the Honda release, it says that this will move closer to production.
44:16So they're not saying, oh, the sensational new hover bike.
44:23It's frictionless, but it can't go around corners.
44:28This is something solid.
44:31They can go places with this.
44:35And I like the idea of a torque curve you can lie on comfortably.
44:42Blood doesn't all rush to your head because your feet are up on a mountain or there's
44:47a torque peak in the middle of your back.
44:52Tossing and turning all night.
44:54Tossing and turning, yes.
44:57Well, it's an exciting possibility and we can't wait to see what comes of it.
45:04Honda was very clearly saying, you know, oh, what do they say at the end there?
45:09We're trying to bring the joy of motorcycling to more people.
45:13And it's true.
45:14I mean, I feel like that's what our job is on our side of the business.
45:18You know, we want to help you understand, help ourselves understand motorcycles better
45:23so we enjoy them better.
45:24We understand them better.
45:25We know what they're for, where they came from or why they behave the way they do.
45:29Easier to control, safer to ride, more stable.
45:35With the beginnings of vehicle awareness.
45:39Because that's coming too.
45:40I went to that BMW test track near Marseille in south of France and they were clearly putting
45:50a lot of effort into a future of motorcycles that will look out for you.
45:59The flip that coin over and you remember perhaps the commercial airliner that carried on clear
46:07across Japan and was on its way to China when a stewardess looked at her watch and ran forward
46:15to the cockpit to find both pilots sleeping.
46:21Because they were flying such an automated airliner that it didn't need them except for
46:27certain functions.
46:29So they very reasonably drifted off.
46:34You ought to ask the passengers how reasonable that is.
46:39I don't find that reasonable at all.
46:42No.
46:43Well, that's always a problem when you make things more self-managing.
46:49We participate in them less.
46:51It becomes more like the person who got into his new motor home, drove off down the interstate
46:58and humming to himself, engaged what was called cruise control and went in the back to make
47:06a sandwich.
47:09Years too soon, years too early.
47:12But this is the direction that things will go in.
47:17Because if we are able to provide these functions, it's likely that they will be provided.
47:25Not only because it's a marketing tool, but because in lawsuit after lawsuit having to
47:32do with liability, the question is asked.
47:37You mean you had the technology to prevent this and you failed to do so?
47:44All these forces act on us all the time, unseen, unheard, but they're there.
47:50For example, sport bikes don't exist anymore, pretty much.
47:56Why is that?
47:57Oh, people got tired of them?
47:59I'm not so sure.
48:00I think insurance companies got tired of them.
48:04And they priced the insurance on any model with the word sport in its name, and those
48:10models disappeared.
48:11Yeah, a lot of challenges there.
48:13To say the sport bike doesn't exist is a little challenging because we've got-
48:18Oh, motorcycles are inherently sporting.
48:21Well, but I know, but we have like Panigale V4s and we have M1000RRs.
48:27There's still action there.
48:28But that churn, that constant development that we were seeing from all the manufacturers,
48:34the two-year development cycle and the leader class is definitely gone.
48:37That's gone.
48:38And not to say it couldn't possibly come back, I have to say post EICMA, looking at our metrics,
48:45sport models did exceptionally well in terms of audience reaction and just page view volume.
48:54But then again, so did the Flying Flea, the electric from Royal Enfield, the concept,
49:00the townie electric.
49:02It's a lovely little bike.
49:03And I think as we've seen, more manufacturers are going that kind of city runabout look.
49:10They're not trying to do the full size motorcycle that writes a check.
49:15That motorcycle is a breakthrough in the styling of electrics because what they have looked
49:21like up to now is a suitcase with fins on it that has had wheels and a seat added.
49:28The suitcase is the battery and you can't make it look like something else.
49:37But the Flying Flea is a step in the right direction with respect to that.
49:43Of course, it doesn't need a huge battery.
49:45It's low powered and just for commuting.
49:49But all the same, I was immediately attracted to it when I saw the graphics.
49:56Nice contours, beautiful aluminum.
50:01Pretty cool.
50:02But yeah, so Honda V3, very exciting to see them back doing this kind of thing and coming
50:06out with a concept that's more than the concept.
50:10That's obviously on its way.
50:12They said it was on its way.
50:13It looks on its way.
50:14As you said, it's not a CNC special.
50:17So man, are we anticipating the introduction of some production motorcycle with this setup.
50:23They have a long history with V3s.
50:25They did the NS two strokes, you know, it's in the Honda DNA.
50:31And so maybe there was something there with that.
50:34What could they call this bike?
50:36Gosh.
50:37NR.
50:38Well, thanks for listening, everybody.
50:43That's it for the Honda V3 episode.
50:45Tell us what you think about the V3 down in the comments or anything else.
50:48Suggest us some topics.
50:51We always appreciate the feedback.
50:53As ever, we enjoy you being on the ride with us.
50:56This episode is brought to you by Octane Lending.
50:59Click that link down there for the Octane PreQual Flex.
51:01If you're shopping for a bike, you can get prequalified, go to a dealer, have your buying
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51:07It's not just a notional offer.
51:09It's an actual offer typically.
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