Electric motorcycles have already made their entry in the market and even in some motorsports. We can’t neglect the fact that they’re going to play a significant role in the future of the entire motorcycle industry of the world. Today, there’re numerous brands that are offering good electric motorcycles. It’s time now when the big old players of the industry, like Yamaha, step in.
Yamaha doesn’t have a production-ready electric motorcycle as of now. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t working on one. Perhaps, it will reveal what it has in its mind when the time is right, which could be not that far away because latest patent filings from Yamaha show that it’s experimenting with the location of the charging port on its future e-bike.
Unlike a petrol-powered bike, which has a conventional arrangement of filling the fuel from the top top of the tank, an electric motorcycle can have its charging port located at different locations. And that’s what Yamaha is trying to achieve as to what would be the best location for the charging port.
The latest patent drawings show four possible locations of the charging port. First, it’s the same conventional setup that any other petrol-powered bike has – top of the tank. However, it’s not entirely the same. Yamaha has kept it a bit offset to the right so that when the bike is parked on its side stand the charging port is facing straight up.
The second design shows the placement of the charging port under the bike’s digital instrument cluster. The cluster or screen would flip up or swivel to the side revealing the port. Moving on, the third design, and possibly what looks like the best of all, has got a port located under the passenger/pillion seat. To access it, the seat needs to be flipped up. It appears that Yamaha used its MT-07 to show this design.
The last and the final patent design, and probably the most innovative, reveal a port located in the nose or headlight of the bike. In the image, we’ve got a previous-generation Yamaha R1.
All these patent drawings clearly tell us that Yamaha has got some ‘electric’ plans for the future. And also, perhaps, using its two popular bikes, R1 and MT-07, in the drawings is a hint to something or maybe not.
