Having owned bikes from manufacturers from several countries—Austria, Italy, the UK, Japan, India, and yes, even China—I can unbiasedly say that the Japanese just have a knack for reliability and dependability.
And sure, their bikes aren’t the flashiest, neither are they the most performance-oriented. Yet, there’s just something about sleeping easy at night knowing that your bike will fire up first thing the next morning.
To that end, when Honda pulled the covers off two new EV motorcycle concepts at EICMA, you could bet that my interest was piqued. Could we finally have a super robust, super reliable, super dependable mainstream electric motorcycle? Well, for the most part, signs point to yes, and the new EV concepts are almost perfect. They just miss out on one super important feature.
More on that in a bit.
As for the concept motorcycles in question, one of them is targeted towards enthusiasts and aims to bring the enjoyment of motorcycling to the future. It is, of course, called the EV Fun Concept. Very Honda. Very Japanese.
And with a similar naming convention, the EV Urban Concept is just that: an electric scooter designed for urban mobility.
In concept, the two bikes are pretty damn awesome—especially the EV Fun Concept. Styling-wise it looks very much up my alley, boasting naked sportbike styling complete with a single-sided swingarm and seamless, flowing lines. It’s sort of how I envision a future iteration of the Honda CB1000R, albeit one that’s fully electric but equally performance-oriented. Best of all, it’s CCS2 compatible, which means you could charge this thing in pretty much any electric car charging station.
