Honda to supply Yamaha with complete electric bikes as an OEM By Ben Purvis
Yamaha and Honda might have been fierce rivals for nearly 70 years, but the two are increasingly coming together in the face of the challenge to meet future drivetrain demands - with the latest tie-in seeing Honda become an electric scooter OEM supplier to Yamaha.
Along with Kawasaki and Suzuki, they have worked together in recent years as part of the Swappable Batteries Consortium for Electric Motorcycles, hammering out a standardised removable battery pack for the Japanese market. They have also been cooperating in the HySE research group to develop small hydrogen-fuelled combustion engines and fuel systems for motorcycles.
The new agreement will see Honda supplying Yamaha with complete electric motorcycles for the Japanese market in the wake of the decision to base the standardised swappable battery pack on the Honda Mobile Power Pack e:, as used in the Honda EM1 e: and Benly e: 1 scooters in Japan. Since those machines are already developed around the Mobile Power Pack e:, they will be the basis of the future Honda-made Yamaha models.
"Honda Benly e: 1 and EM1 e:"
It's a move that replicates an increasingly common trend among car manufacturers to share components and technology, even building entire vehicles for each other, to cut down on R&D expense. With electric vehicles, it's becoming an even more tempting solution, because electric motors and batteries aren't key to a vehicle's character, unlike the combustion engines that went before them.
Although the agreement between Honda and Yamaha currently covers only vehicles for the Japanese market, only the Honda EM1 e: electric scooter is already sold in Europe and beyond, and the two companies, alongside a host of other brands, are core members of the European Swappable Batteries Motorcycle Consortium that's trying to bring the same idea of a standardised motorcycle battery pack to the European market.
By joining forces on Honda-based bikes, they increase the chances that the Honda Mobile Power Pack e: will prevail as the basis of the European consortium's choice as well as the Japanese one.