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Apparently the fact that Honda sells over 13 million motorcycles globally each year means they have big research bucks. Aside from the Brake-by-Wire system (separate KR Thread), they have also been trotting out additional R&D projects to the press that I figured my KR brothers might like to know about...
One of the more interesting ones was a cylinder activation/deactivation system they're calling Hyper-VTEC that takes a traditional four cylinder and rather than shutting down cylinders on demand, actually starts with cylinders shut down and wakes up cylinders on demand. In the rideable example they let the journo's ride, they took a blackbird (transverse inline 4 cylinder) and equipped it with Hyper-VTEC. Under the system, the engine actually starts up on just two cylinders and uses just those two for low-speed maneuvering, then as you accelerate harder, brings in a third cylinder (30 - 75% of the RPM band), and only for massive hyper-speed maneuvers (top 25% of the RPM band) actually fires up the fourth cylinder.
Although the system provides extreme fuel savings in a logic manner, the press who were at the event panned it badly, saying that at idle, the beast sounded like an inline four with two cylinders misfiring, and initial acceleration was such that it set some of the rider's teeth on edge, since the bangs were spread so far apart and so harsh (without all four cylinders firing, balance & smoothness is simply gone); with three cylinders firing it felt like a four banger with one miss-firing cylinder.
When asked, Hayato Maehara from Honda's design development said that this was the only way to hit their target of a 30% fuel-consumption reduction (as verses to Cadillac and Chrysler's previous methods for shutting down cylinders at steady-state cruise but firing on all cylinders at start up).
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On a separate note, honda also said it was creating a whole new motorcycle niche, promising "to develop another model which creates a new motorcycle category and market as did the Super Cub," adding that R&D will "be strengthened with a determination and passion to create the Super Cub of the next generation."
Although the Honda Super Cub (a 50cc step-through two-wheeler) was the single most successful design on the planet for anything in the two-wheel motoring realms (with 60 million built & sold globally), I still have no clue what their statement really means in English
Cheers,
=-= The CyberPoet
One of the more interesting ones was a cylinder activation/deactivation system they're calling Hyper-VTEC that takes a traditional four cylinder and rather than shutting down cylinders on demand, actually starts with cylinders shut down and wakes up cylinders on demand. In the rideable example they let the journo's ride, they took a blackbird (transverse inline 4 cylinder) and equipped it with Hyper-VTEC. Under the system, the engine actually starts up on just two cylinders and uses just those two for low-speed maneuvering, then as you accelerate harder, brings in a third cylinder (30 - 75% of the RPM band), and only for massive hyper-speed maneuvers (top 25% of the RPM band) actually fires up the fourth cylinder.
Although the system provides extreme fuel savings in a logic manner, the press who were at the event panned it badly, saying that at idle, the beast sounded like an inline four with two cylinders misfiring, and initial acceleration was such that it set some of the rider's teeth on edge, since the bangs were spread so far apart and so harsh (without all four cylinders firing, balance & smoothness is simply gone); with three cylinders firing it felt like a four banger with one miss-firing cylinder.
When asked, Hayato Maehara from Honda's design development said that this was the only way to hit their target of a 30% fuel-consumption reduction (as verses to Cadillac and Chrysler's previous methods for shutting down cylinders at steady-state cruise but firing on all cylinders at start up).
_______________
On a separate note, honda also said it was creating a whole new motorcycle niche, promising "to develop another model which creates a new motorcycle category and market as did the Super Cub," adding that R&D will "be strengthened with a determination and passion to create the Super Cub of the next generation."
Although the Honda Super Cub (a 50cc step-through two-wheeler) was the single most successful design on the planet for anything in the two-wheel motoring realms (with 60 million built & sold globally), I still have no clue what their statement really means in English
Cheers,
=-= The CyberPoet
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