Honda's Vultus Men Discover Euro FFs!
Two of the key Honda Japan personnel behind the new Vultus NM4 750 twin, Keita Mikura (left) the chief engineer and Taro Nishimoto, the designer, were introduced to the history of FFs in a pub near Heathrow Airport on 21st May 2014 by Yours Truly. As I suspected, they had absolutely no prior knowledge of any of the ground-breaking FFs made in Europe or the USA until I gave them a two-hour 'crash course', with suitable illustrations, and some very helpful translation from Paul Nower of Honda Europe. Mikura-san, a former motorcycle racer, revealed that he liked the Vultus so much that he has bought one with his own money.
PNB
Photo: Paul N. Blezard
Did you tell them about the
Did you tell them about the Monoliner?
Too Early
If you look at the date of the above event, or at least it's original posting, you'll see it was about a year before Monoliner went to MIRA, it's first public outing. So these key, if ignorant, Honad designers wouldn't have known about it's performance and Paul didn't point them, or anyone else, at the promo video on this site.
But in any case it's unlikely to have mattered. Ignore bullshit like Honad 'not using ideas from outside honad' (When did they do anything else?) and look at the basic economics;-
Large motorcycles are a niche entertainment products that are extremely profitable, even in small numbers and confer prestige on the manufacturers - for some reason I forget.
Small cars are a marginally profitable mass market product that provide the bread and butter for most of the auto industry.
FF's are less profitable than large motorcycles, because they have more user-friendly features and do more things. They're cheaper to make than small cars, but have to be sold for less - because there's less vehicle and because E-FFs costing less than E-cars is the USP.
So FFs (Especially E-FFs) disrupt both the large motorcycle market and the small car market, reducing the profitability of the first and the sales of the latter. What existing auto maker in their right mind would touch them with a barge-pole?
E-bike makers? You're joking. They're all motorised bicycle enthusiasts. They don't want to make a new two wheeler, or win two wheeler races. They just want to keep riding motorised bicycles, with E-power if needed. They don't even think about anything that isn't a motorised bicycle. If they were running aviation we'd still be using bi-planes, car racing, the engines would still be in the front!
New E-auto makers? What like Tesla? Apart from their interest in driveless cars (which spell the end of PTW's generally) they don't respond to external inputs, of any sort, so no-one knows.
There's a big market for E-FFs for the people who need transport but can't afford e-cars but I can't find anyone who wants to make them and I have been looking! Basically, nothings changed. If you want an FF, E-powered or otherwise, you'll need to make it yourself. Good luck with that.