Dual-Fuel Daily! Yamaha FZ-X ‘Hybrid’ Leaked
A dealer conference in India has shown Yamaha could be following Kawasaki into the petrol/electric segment with an FZ-X Hybrid
Dealer conferences are great for news sites like Visordown. You’ve got a room full of showroom managers and staff who, when fuelled with food and drink, snap away on their phones like over-excited school children.
Happily for us, the bikes they like to photograph, and then inevitably post on social media, are the ones that the manufacturers really don’t want them to leak out - as is the case with this latest leak from India.
The news is that Yamaha is taking the bold step of joining Kawasaki in the hybrid motorcycle sector, with an electrically assisted version of the Asian-market FZ-X. And I’m using the phrase ‘electrically assisted’ here, because, in the the purest sense, I’m not sure this qualifies as a proper hybrid as we know it.\
What the reports from various sources suggest is that the FZ-X Hybrid will be fitted with a Smart Motor Generator System (SMG) which is already a feature on several Yamaha models. It allows the stop/start feature on lots of Yamaha’s small-capacity bikes, although, on the FZ-X Hybrid, it’ll also do a little bit more.
The word from the dealer conference is that it will be configured to give the dinky FZ-X, which boasts 150cc and around 11bhp a mild boost in low and mid-range acceleration to help get the bike off the line more briskly. Using the system in this way Yamaha could, theoretically, boost off-the-line performance while also helping to save some fuel and prevent the production of harmful emissions. Many of these are produced when the bike is running at low revs and not in its optimum operating window. Being able to lean on the electric motor during this phase of riding could be a nice helping hand.
Now, we are taking this all with a grain of salt, as most reports on the subject note that the ‘reveal’ of the technology was fairly lowkey, with no firm specs or finer details divulged about the system. We’ll be keeping an eye on the Yamaha Motor India website for more concrete information.
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Simon (AKA Toad) has been working within the motorcycle industry for more than twelve years, and a member of the motorcyclist family since birth. Growing up around British-built single and twins, it was inevitable that a life on two wheels was on the cards, from a very early age!
