Honda is planning a rapid expansion of its electric motorcycle range, with at least 10 new battery bikes promised by 2025, three of which will be full-size motorcycles, not scooters or mopeds. We won’t see them all straightaway, as Honda is envisaging a phased launch, starting with what it calls ‘Honda e: Business bikes series’ which are likely to be electric mopeds aimed at fleet users for short urban deliveries. Honda already makes the electric Benley-e, which is used by the Japanese and Vietnamese postal services. Commuter motorcycles or scooters aimed at private customers will follow in 2023-24, but the real interest for motorcyclists lies with what it calls ‘Fun EV’ machines, which will be sold in Europe as well as

Battery swapping for electric scooters is big business in Taiwan, where 340,000 swaps are made every day by riders who subscribe to the service. Rather than charging batteries at home or work, the riders simply rock up to one of nearly 11,000 swapping stations and change their depleted battery for a fully charged one. It’s one answer to the conundrum for flat dwellers – how to charge your scooter when you live on the 7th floor. The system is run by Gogoro, which launched it in 2015 and now provides a standard battery swap service for ten different brands of scooter, including Yamaha. It claims to have 92% of this ‘electric refuelling’ market in Taiwan, covering 25% of all powered two-wheelers sold

Fred Warr, who with his father did more than anyone else to bring Harley-Davidson into Britain, has died aged 93. He had been suffering from motor neurone disease and passed away peacefully at home. It’s hard to overstate the importance of the Warr family to Harley in this country – it was the company’s only UK dealer from the early 1950s to the early ‘70s. Warr’s Harley-Davidson, now occupying two sites in London, has been the classic tale of a family dynasty. It remains Harley’s oldest dealer in Europe and the business (though not as an official dealer) will celebrate its centenary in 2024. It was in 1924 that Fred’s father Captain Frederick James Warr was demobbed from the British Army. He

A line up of 12 Triumphs bearing the Daytona name makes up a new display at the British Motor Museum at Gaydon, which until now has focused on cars. The Daytona badge was coined for Triumph’s twin-carb 500cc twins after Buddy Elmore won the famed Daytona 200 race back in 1966 – his race bike takes pride of place in the exhibition, along with three more of the early 500s including a 1974 bike, one of the last made. The line up goes on to include the early Hinckley-built Daytonas – sports bike of the Hinckley Triumphs – and a good selection of 675cc triples, including the original 2008 Daytona and the latest Daytona 765 Moto2 Limited Edition, taking in road

The Purple Helmets, the hilarious and highly skilled motorcycle stunt team, is to retire this summer, with its final show scheduled for August on the Isle of Man. Anyone who has attended a major open air motorcycle show in the UK in the last 25 years can’t have missed them. Mounted on ageing Honda C90, dressed in identical dirty brown macs and with deadpan faces hidden behind shades, the Purple Helmets attempted to replicate White Helmet stunts such as the Pyramid, adding their own wackier versions, such as dustbin racing (imagine a Honda 90 towing a sawn-off bin at speed) or a naked man playing a piano in a sidecar. For something which started out as a few friends having fun,

Guy Martin is planning an attack on the rotary-engined motorcycle speed record, riding the Crighton CR700W. BMF members will have read our profile of the machine and it’s Dorset-based manufacturer Rotron, which also builds paramotors and jet boards – see Motorcycle Rider, Spring 2022. The CR700W is a development of Norton’s rotary racers of the 1990s, masterminded by ex-Norton man Brian Crighton, who carried on refining the racers until they were banned from circuits in 1995. He continued R&D, first with Stuart Garner and now with Rotron. The CR700W is now being built in limited numbers by Rotron, with a price tag of £95,000. Ironically, given that the rotary was banned from racing over 25 years ago, the new bike is

Shropshire is the latest UK county to adopt a Wheels to Work (W2W) scheme, offering cheap moped and 125cc scooter hire to younger riders. There are currently 22 such schemes across the UK, all of them aimed at younger riders who could not otherwise afford personal transport. Shropshire’s Community Resource charity has contracted Wheels to Work Silverstone to administer the scheme, which offers moped hire from £40 a week and 125s from £55. Based at Silverstone race circuit, W2W Silverstone has been supplying bikes and administration for similar W2W schemes since 2019, and currently runs schemes in Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire and Berkshire, as well as Shropshire. They have a particular role in the more rural counties, where public

We’ve had leather, body armour and airbags to protect ourselves in the event of a crash, but now Swedish company Airbag Inside has gone one step further, patenting a safety parachute for motorcyclists. First reported in US bike magazine Motorcycle World, the system aims to slow riders down once they’ve come off the bike and keep them on a straight trajectory. It’s not as daft as it seems – riders who have come off need to lose speed as quickly as possible, slide rather than tumble, and keep out the way of their bike. A parachute could potentially meet all these needs, though the technology looks more suited to racetrack use than the road. According to Airbag Inside’s patent application, the device

Honda UK is aiming to get 500 non-riders into the seat of a motorcycle this summer, in a new test ride programme which it hopes will lead to more life-long bikers. The Ride Free Experience is offering no-pressure test rides on the CB125F, Grom and MSX125, off the road, and is run by Honda dealers and the Honda School of Motorcycling. There is no test involved – the idea is just to have a go – but the two-hour session includes a safety briefing as well as the ride. As a further inducement, riders taking up the scheme are offered £50 towards their CBT costs (if they choose to take a CBT later on) and £500 off the price of a

Heading to Austria this summer, and have a liking for biking acrobatics? Then beware, because the Austrian government is cracking down on wheelies, stoppies and other vehicle shenanigans – fines go up to 10,000 euros and your bike could be impounded for three days. The Austrian Motor Vehicles Act has been amended to outlaw boy racerish games such as drifting, tyre squealing and backfiring. “Non-situational use of the motor vehicle in which there is not contact between the road surface and all wheels at all times," is also outlawed – in other words, wheelies and stoppies. Wheelspins, wheel locking and doughnuts join the banned list as well. The rules apply to quiet areas such as private car parks just as much as

Norton, now revived under ownership of Indian giant TVS, and with a new factory in Solihull up and running, is underlining its long heritage by buying up key historic models. A total of 55 bikes have been bought from Norton collector Ian Loram, who had built up the collection since the 1990s. Stretching from 1916 to 1992, they include some of the rarest Nortons ever made, including a Model 1 Big Four, a rare speedway bike from 1930 and an example of the rotary-engined Norton F1, road going version of the RCW588 race bike from the early '90s. There's also a 1968 Norton Atlas which was used for royal escort duties when new. Some of the bikes will go on display in