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Honda To Debut Self-Balancing Motorcycle Concept At 2017 Tokyo

Self-Balancing Motorcycle

Self-Balancing Motorcycle Riding Assist-E Concept Headed For 2017 Tokyo Motor Show

Self-Balancing Motorcycle: FEW concept bikes make the type of mainstream splash that Honda achieved earlier this season with its Riding Assist Concept. It was not jaw-droppingly powerful or stunningly beautiful, only a NC750-based thought for a future commuter machine.

Self-Balancing Motorcycle

Why the interest from the non-motorcycle media? Because it had an almost magical self-balancing ability. Without gyroscopes or stabilizers, Honda only employed a computer controlled method to make tiny steering adjustments, rather than a stunt rider could. An adjustable headstock increased the bicycle’s rake, amplifying the side-to-side motion from these steering tweaks, making it easier to keep the bike’s center of gravity directly above its contact patch.

Self-Balancing Motorcycle

Honda’s smart move of launching the Riding Assist at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, as opposed to a bike event, added into its mainstream effects.

Now, however, the company is going to show a second Riding Assist concept, the Riding Assist-e. Again it’s using a mainstream event — that the Tokyo Motor Show — rather than a pure bike show as its own platform.

The gap between the Riding Help and the Riding Assist-e is a lower-case ‘e’ — and that, most of us know, means it’s electric. Gone is your NC750 parallel twin of the first, and in its own place come an electric motor and a huge battery.

Self-Balancing Motorcycle

The battery is mounted low down, keeping the middle of gravity low, while the motor is over it. There’s a rotating drive integrated into a single-sided swingarm to transmit the electricity, but the frame still looks much like the NC750’s in its overall layout.

Besides the slightly futuristic styling and, needless to say, the self-steering system, there is nothing into the bicycle that looks too much from showroom-ready. Can Honda be dropping a hint that there’s a NC750-class electric mode in the pipeline?

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