What does the future hold for the Motorcycle Industry?

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What does the future hold for motorcycles? Will they still have the passion surrounding them or be relegated to basic transport?

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Welcome to the Throttle and Roast podcast. I'm your host, Niels Meersschaert. In this episode, we'll explore some trends that may impact the motorcycle industry. Will some of the changes that are affecting the auto industry also impact motorcycles. And what about character? Is it just a quaint ideal or something we expect bikes to continue to have?

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So I'd like to start this off with talking a bit about the auto industry, because I think there's some trends there that might be worrying to a broader industry, certainly of an enthusiast. When it comes to motorcycles and as we discussed probably in an earlier episode, certainly in the United States where I'm based, there tends to be a little bit more of an enthusiast aspect to motorcycles than basic transportation. So that feeling may be a little bit more applicable. And what I'd like to highlight certainly in the auto industry is realizing some of the trends that are going on. So, for example, sports cars and in general, two door cars are far less popular today than they once were. And those were cars that were really focused on being about fun. They were focused on enthusiasts.

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they weren't necessarily the most practical vehicles, but they they were a fun vehicle.

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And it's becoming rarer and rarer to find those available today. Certainly, you know, you've got a handful of two door cars that are still around, even, you know, things like the Jeep Wrangler, which had always been a two door. The four door model was introduced, but now the four door model outsells the two door by the lion's share. And I think this has to do with that. People are looking for their vehicle choice to be far more practical.

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So they don't want to have multiple vehicles like I'm going to get one vehicle and that's it.

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related into this would actually be convertibles. There were far more convertible cars available many years ago than there are today. And I think this plays into that same realm of a convertible may not be quite as practical of a car than something else. this is something where we're losing a little bit of that fun feeling that comes into it. Another thing that I would point out that plays into the Enthusiasts is manual transmissions. These were once the only common aspect of how you would drive a car for many, many years and automatics started to get better and better.

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And of course, people who maybe thought of the car more as an appliance certainly used automatics, but automatics have gotten to the point where they're more fuel efficient and in some cases faster acceleration than a stick shift would be. And this is relegated to the point today where manual transmissions have take rates of less than 3%. So less than 3% of all cars sold, certainly in the United States are manual transmissions. In fact, the number of cars that you can even get a manual transmission on is getting fewer and fewer. Now, this might be somewhat related.

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These couple of trends that I just highlighted may be related to the fact that SUVs have started to become the most popular style of car. And I say that car with a little bit of air quotes there, because if you think of manufacturers like Ford, Ford has actually said that they will no longer make cars with the exception of the Mustang. So their entire line is all SUVs or trucks. this may be why we're finding a little bit less of that opportunity for enthusiasts.

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If the only enthusiast vehicle on an entire manufacturer's product line is the Mustang.

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It's very limited to allow for more variety and more choices than what they used to have. And this might be related to some of the governmental mandates that are coming into play. Certainly, if we look at around the globe, you know, Euro five emissions is coming into play. You've got all the things that are happening in the U.S. from the EPA. Their combination of both having mandates of fuel economy, reduced noise, maybe even some mandates that are specifying that a certain percentage must be electric vehicles are really killing things like the V-8 and naturally aspirated engines. So what we have is cars that historically had been V8s. Even some trucks that had been V-8 are now going down to V6s in an effort to have better fuel economy, but also less noise and oftentimes they're adding in a turbo to further improve the performance that one gets for a given volume of fuel. So they're really starting to change. Now, another aspect that's coming in with cars, and I think this is somewhat related to a lot of the complexity that we're adding with all the mandates is expense.

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There are two realms that I'll reference here. The first is about fuel prices. Now, I remember in the nineties where I would pay less than a dollar per gallon of gas and this was in, the New York City area. So we were never the most, cheap gas ever. But I remember paying $0.

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85, $0.87 a gallon for gas.

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Nowadays it's $3 to $4 depending upon, you know, whether you're getting regular gas or premium.

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So gas is significantly more expensive than what it was previously. And this is probably why we're getting more of a market demand towards having more economy, maybe a little bit less of that. Amazing sounding and fun character to a V-8 Now, the other thing is that the median price of a new car is more than the median income certainly in the United States.

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So this expense of a car is probably causing more homes to decide, you know what? We're going to get a single car that has all the practicality into it rather than getting their practical car and a fun car, like a sports car or a convertible. So that I think the price is having a big impact.

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The other one is that passion seems to be going away for cars.

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everyone looked forward to turning 16 and be able to get their driver's license. It was this moment of freedom to be able to get out and go. And everyone was talking about the various cars. They were all excited by them. I don't see that quite as often with the younger people anymore. They aren't necessarily excited to get their driver's license. Now, this could be an aspect of, you know, we have more Internet capability, more people are using their phones all the time.

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So their heads are in that rather than getting out and driving. But this car culture has seemed to disappear. So I'd love to hear from you. What do you think? Do you think that modern cars are boring because that car passion has gone or are cars boring because nobody is passionate about cars. Text the the show through the link in the show notes and we'll share your feedback in a future episode.

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So this begs the question, is the same thing happening with motorcycles? We've continued to see more and more tech be added to motorcycles in recent years.

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There's far more electronics, of course. I remember when I first got my motorcycles in the nineties, ABS was not as common as it is now and I think in Europe it's pretty much mandated.

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But you try to find a bike today that doesn't have ABS, it's usually the very bottom of the market. The other one that we have is traction control. So. If you get a little too aggressive on the throttle. It used to be that you could break the rear end of the bike loose. And maybe that was fun. Maybe you did a bit of a burnout. But a lot of bikes today have traction control to try to tame that and keep you a little bit more control. This can be a good thing in that if you get too aggressive, you could lose control of the bike, The other one is that instead of analog gauges today we have all these TFT displays and those displays are certainly adding in expense of having to make sure that you have a display that works really well in various light conditions that is able to communicate all the information effectively that has the sharpness and the brightness to be able to support it. Another one in this can be both a good and a bad thing is ride by wire. As a consequence of pretty much every bike made today being fuel injected. We're also having where that is being managed through a ride by wire.

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There's no longer an actual throttle cable that goes directly to the throttle bodies.

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Instead, that throttle control is sending a signal to a computer and then the computer is adjusting the throttle bodies accordingly. And this is done for a couple of reasons. One is it allows you to do things like that, traction control where you can affect how much is actually going to end up at the engine.

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The other thing is that this allows them to meet various noise mandates where they can adjust and almost create a flat band in the powerband of the bike without actually changing the engine. But they can have the effect of it because that's changing your throttle position.

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So ride by wire is another big one. and this is really starting to come in in the past few years is we now have automatic transmissions. Now KTM and BMW both announced automatics for next year. Honda, of course, has had their DCT for a few years now, but as manual transmissions are in, cars are basically gone.

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How much longer will it be until a bike's manual transmission is no more? I mean, to me, this is this is an aspect of riding a motorcycle that I've always taken for granted was you always had a manual transmission. And it might be that this was actually a sticking point for other people to become a motorcyclist, because if all of the cars nowadays are automatics, it's not that they're coming from driving a manual transmission in a car and then, oh, they're just coming in to a motorcycle to do the same. Until my current car, every car I've ever owned in my life was a manual transmission. And mostly we got the automatic because of my wife. So I've always been manual first and that's what I learned to drive on. But if you look at most people today, that is not their case. So is automatic is an automatic transmission going to change this character for a lot of riders? And would this make it more appealing to new riders? I think this is an open question.

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Now, we talked about a bunch of the tech you know, one of the other things that's playing into the engines is that they're smoother than they ever were before. We've got balance shafts which eliminate most engine vibrations on new bikes and in new bikes, especially with ride by wire can be as digital or as smooth as you want. You can even switch ride modes I have on my my for example, my 18. I can switch between rock roll and rain and whether you like the nomenclature in that or not, that might be a little bit of a debate, but you can have a little bit more of a direct feeling, a little bit more character into it. You can have a role where it's a little bit smoother, perfect for riding onto the highway. And of course, rain, it's going to reduce that power for when it is wet conditions. So you're not going to get the rear end loose. bikes are really getting much, much smoother than they were before.

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Now, what I wonder about is if we look at the camera industry, it's a tiny shell of what it once was. And the reason for that is that most everyone just uses their phone to take pictures and this is even, you know, after we got to the digital revolution. So obviously film was a very different beast.

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You shot on film, you had maybe 24, 36 exposures. You'd have to bring your camera to a physical Fotomat, for example, to get the pictures developed and then get them back. So you didn't even see what you took until days later in most cases. The digital photos really gave that immediate gratification and allowed you to perhaps. Shoot a little bit more willy nilly. You didn't have to think and compose.

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But what happened is that we went from digital cameras to really a phone. So everyone just uses this one device that's kind of, again, that convenience of, well, I want one thing they can do everything and we've lost that. And the camera industry has really become a very small part of once it was. So my question to you is, do you think that bikes have been losing out on their character? And what bothers you most about the direction that bikes have been heading? Text the show through the link in the show notes and I'll share your feedback in a future episode.

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So the big question is when we think of the future of motorcycles is will there be a return to character? We talked a lot about the tech. We talked about how this is actually making perhaps more approachable.

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We're perhaps making the character of the engines be a little bit more deadened in the name of fitting to all of the emission standards, etc.. But will there be a return if we think of every generation, every one of them has had a retro era, if you will, where what was old is cool again, And this this plays, I think, a bit into the authentic self as we get a little bit too much of where everything is homogenized, everything is smoothed out, Everything has we've softened all of the rough edges of every product. there's not as much of an emotional connection to products as there once were. You can think of this in the photo industry that we talked about.

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So nobody, for the most part, shoots film anymore. the local Fotomat booth is long gone.

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You're never going to see those anymore. And you've got your phone in your pocket with a high rez camera on it. So that's what most people tend to use for photos. But there is a little bit of a growing movement in photography where it's becoming cool again. Fujifilm, for example, has all these film simulations on their cameras. So if you're shooting in JPEG, you can say, I want it to look just like old Fujifilm Velvia film with these very bright greens.

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So there's an aspect of bringing back that old style, and people are really enjoying it. They also have Fuji actually has some of the the printable cameras where it will be almost like a Polaroid. It'll print out directly in there. They call it the Instax line. And this will give you an image right out of the camera so you can kind of get that almost feeling of it.

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It's this individual print as opposed to a digital that you just throw away and you don't think of. So they're making each image be a little bit more special. You know, there's the famous song, you know, please don't take my Kodachrome away.

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People have that nostalgic feel.

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So there are these character of coming back that maybe helping us with that retro feel. Now, the thing is, I wonder about for bikes, you know, old bikes, if we really, really think of them, they had a lot of character to them. And I have a 1972 R75/5 that's more than 50 years old at this point. It's absolutely filled to the brim with character. It's not the most fuel efficient, it's not the most powerful, it's not the best handling compared to any other modern bike. But there's something to it that is pretty remarkable. They had this vibration to them, you know, everything just kind of like, you know, there was a vibration part of it because the engine wasn't quite as balanced as you have in modern engines. You have the smell of the carbs that would be coming through. So there's just more complete experience that's involving all of your senses. Sometimes the acceleration on an older bike isn't as smooth as it is today.

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This is why that ride by wire can really smooth out some rough spots in the engine and make it feel smoother. But when you had an old an old bike where it was all carburetor driven throttle, you know, with a physical cable, sometimes you had jerky acceleration. all of the stuff was creating a character to motorcycles that was a much more filling experience, but it also meant a lot more downsides to it.

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And and this is where if you think of some of the desire to have the image and maybe the character at least somewhat of that in modern bikes, you look at some of the modern classic line, for example, by Triumph and Royal Enfield. Both of those brands, I think, do a phenomenal job of giving the certainly the appearance of an older bike from the sixties or seventies, but still with the advantages of the modern emissions and the modern equipment. So, you know, triumph particularly is well known for giving the appearance of a carburetor when it's actually still fuel injected bodies, and even hiding in their more recent, they hide the, the water cooling radiator. So it actually is not very noticeable. So it still looks like an old air cooled bike. Royal Enfield, I'll say, was the other one that I think really does a phenomenal job of this. Royal Enfield in many ways really is maintaining that because they're all air cooled bikes for the most part, the interceptor 650 the Continental GT these are all both 650 CC twins and they're just oozing, oozing, oozing with character.

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But the thing is they're also really not expensive. And this is, I think, where there's a dichotomy between, let's say, a triumph of in the United States, if you wanted to buy, let's say, a Bonneville T100, you're over$10,000 for it, whereas that Royal Enfield Interceptor 650 is less than $7,000. So it's a lot cheaper for that Royal Enfield and they're both oozing, oozing with character. Another one that I can say that I I've ridden recently that I think is is absolutely oozing with character is the MotoGuzzi V7. styled after what they've been building as a bike for many, many years.

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Still an air cooled transversely mounted v-twin and it just has gobs of character to it. The engine just has wonderful vibrations. It's a shaft drive like many of the BMW, so it has its own feeling that's unique than a chain drive. Do you think there will be a broader retro trend coming in to motorcycles?

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adventure bikes like the middleweights are becoming very, very popular. And there seems to be almost a counter movement maybe to offset some of the expense that's coming in from all the tech on these bikes. But do you think that this growing trend towards a smaller capacity bike is is really growing? And what do you think is next for the motorcycle industry? Do you think we're going to become more the appliances like cars, or will we recapture that spirit that has been a big appeal to motorcyclists, certainly of the older generation. Text the show through the link in the show notes and we'll share your feedback in a future episode So let's wrap this up.

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You know, we've talked about a lot of different possibilities for what's coming into the future of motorcycles. We discussed how cars have been becoming more generic. We've lost as many of the sports cars that we once had. The convertibles is all but gone.

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Manual transmissions are near impossible to find anymore. And these cars that once favored enthusiasts are becoming fewer and fewer every day. Bikes have been gaining all of these new electronics and capabilities that are quite similar to cars.

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And have they lost that character and spirit? And would a retro revival possibly change this? I wonder about this all the time in terms of motorcycles.

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What is next on the horizon?

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Thanks so much for listening.

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We'll see you in the next episode.

What does the future hold for the Motorcycle Industry?

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