"Added complexity???" It's putting a motor and battery on the outside of the bike. It doesn't involve engineering gearing changes and a transmission clutch to divert a starter motor from driving a flywheel to start an engine to driving the driveshaft to move the motorcycle. That is NOT easy. Maybe for the rider perhaps, but that takes a LOT of engineering know-how to build into the bike.
I'm not claiming what honda did in the goldwing is easy, but they're smart people, and every other moto manufacturer has smart people as well, and could add this feature if it was necessary. It's not common, but part of that is because there's simply not a huge demand for this feature. Creep is what the friction zone is for, and on most bikes you reverse so seldom that walking the bike back is really not an issue. Keep in mind how resistant motorcycle culture is to any new tech or complexity, whether that's a DCT , ABS, throttle by wire, etc. These additions really have to be proven and well implemented before they're embraced, if they're ever embraced at all.
You're right that putting a motor on the outside of the bike sounds simple, but it's more complex than that for several reasons. As TheRan said, the motor is going to have to be a lot bigger and heavier than pictured. This requires the license plate holder/fender to become a structural element of the bike, which would add significant unsprung weight and hurt the handling characteristics of the bike. It also adds costs, from the materials of the more robust mount to the cabling to the motors themselves to the likely bigger 12v battery and motor controller. You'd also need a mechanism to make sure this motor is held sufficiently away from the tire when not in use and then provide enough pressure to grip the tire when in use. And let's not act like none of this requires engineering to make happen.
The honda solution certainly requires slightly more complexity than a bike without it, but in terms of material costs it should be much less than the fender design. And it has already been proven and implemented in a production motorcycle, so that engineering work is done and we know it works. It also keeps all of its parts internal to the motorcycle, while the Michelin motors are exposed and could more easily be damaged.
Worth noting the video I linked to is a different imlimentation than what theran is talking about. That video shows the newer goldwing with the DCT, but they were doing this for years with just the starter motor in the older goldwings.
What would be the advantage of switching to the Michelin design? The only thing that makes some sense to me is as a 3rd party accessory to retrofit heavy bikes that would benefit from reverse. But even that is a stretch, what would you have, dozens of customers?
I'm glad we're riding electrics that can implement this feature through a button and software instead of being a bigger engineering feet like this.
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Topic: Michelin patents a possum-scraper electric drive (Read 858 times)