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[FuzzyTrace]

I wonder how BMW decides what concepts are production worthy...
https://electrek.co/2019/06/25/bmw-first-electric-motorcycle-vision-dc-roadster/

[Richard230]

I wonder how BMW decides what concepts are production worthy...
https://electrek.co/2019/06/25/bmw-first-electric-motorcycle-vision-dc-roadster/

These design decisions are made after taking some wild drugs.   

[BrianTRice@gmail.com]

It looks like the bottom half of an R-bike, and that part of it looks fine.

[wavelet]

Not impressed.
-- A sportbike-like tuck on a completely naked bike that has zero wind protection.
What's the point? On sportbikes, while the tuck may be uncomfortable, you gain aerodynamics since most of the body is within the fairing bubble.
-- Instrumentation where it's impossible to see without taking eyes off the road
-- The fake-tank lines are ridiculous. Why not use that space for something? Even just a flat surface for a tankbag.
-- Those protuberances from the pack that are supposed to look like R-bike cylinder heads are supposedly cooling radiators, but they don't look very effective there (where's the surface area)?
-- No storage, or any way I can see to mount a rear carrier.
-- The design team is proud of a magnetic rucksack they came up with -- every riding instructor I ever met always cautioned against wearing backpacks, esp. in spirited riding: It makes for worse control, harder to do head checks, and in case of an accident, higher risk of back/spine damage.
-- No mudguards. Sure, not hard to add, but someone wasn't thinking of details.

I don't think it looks remotely like an R-bike (I did lots of miles on models from the 1970s & 1980s) -- it looks like designers who don't actually ride were told to do a design "inspired by the boxer". That's completely silly for a vehicle with no actual ICE. What made the original R-bikes, like the VW bug, neat, is the minimalistic function-dictates-form  approach.

Oh, and BMW used to have a longstanding policy that they'd never publish a pic of bike with rider without ATTGATT, even though it made their ads & PR look nerdy compared to the competition; it's sad to see a pic of a bike at high speed with the rider wearing half-fingered gloves.

[JaimeC]

The BMW Motorrad that I grew up with is dead and buried.  The current management team doesn't give a rat's ass about building long-lasting, durable, dependable motorcycles.  All they want to do is "Sell, Sell, Sell."  Total bike sales look far sexier to a shareholder than bikes with 200,000+ miles on their odometers.

That's why they're building motorcycles for every conceivable market.  That's also why their bikes just barely make it past the warranty period (and why they changed their warranty from "3 years, unlimited miles" to "3 years or 36,000 miles, whichever comes first").  They're after those people who like to buy the latest and greatest "Garage Jewelry" and don't care how reliable it is because they put so little mileage on them, and trade them in after three years anyway.

Consumer Reports reliability rankings show the whole, sad story. I think my K1200LT is the last remnant of the "Old BMW Motorrad."  I wouldn't buy a new BMW (car OR motorcycle) on a dare now.

[wavelet]

The BMW Motorrad that I grew up with is dead and buried.  The current management team doesn't give a rat's ass about building long-lasting, durable, dependable motorcycles.  All they want to do is "Sell, Sell, Sell."  Total bike sales look far sexier to a shareholder than bikes with 200,000+ miles on their odometers.

That's why they're building motorcycles for every conceivable market.  That's also why their bikes just barely make it past the warranty period (and why they changed their warranty from "3 years, unlimited miles" to "3 years or 36,000 miles, whichever comes first").  They're after those people who like to buy the latest and greatest "Garage Jewelry" and don't care how reliable it is because they put so little mileage on them, and trade them in after three years anyway.

Consumer Reports reliability rankings show the whole, sad story. I think my K1200LT is the last remnant of the "Old BMW Motorrad."  I wouldn't buy a new BMW (car OR motorcycle) on a dare now.

Yup. It's pretty clear how it happened:
They went from a company making basically a single engine type (airhead boxers) with a few displacement variants, for general-purpose mostly road bikes for decades, to making numerous bike- and engine types (I think it's at 8-9 for each, respectively, now) in the space of a few years, while still being  a fairly small manufacturer in terms of volume & employee count. Something had to give. Most of the people I know who bought their new bikes here in the past 15 years have been quite disappointed -- and bikes are very expensive here, due to hefty import duties; just as an example,  base price, out the door, for a (non-ADV) BMW R1250GS is US$44650, including VAT. And there are no deals -- you don't buy from a dealer, you always buy directly from the importer at MSRP. At most you get small discounts during model changeover.

[JaimeC]

"Relatively small?"  You realize BMW as a whole is bigger than Honda as a whole, right??

[wavelet]

"Relatively small?"  You realize BMW as a whole is bigger than Honda as a whole, right??

I think you're wrong even looking at the companies as a whole: BMW made 2.5M cars last year, Honda 5.2M, and BMW Group has 135K employees vs. 215K. Honda has divisions which make lots of things which BMW doesn't: Power equipment, appliances, ATVs, PWCs, robots, even jet aircraft.

Anyhow, however, IMO it's not relevant to compare Honda as a whole to BMW as a whole -- the apt comparison is the 2-wheeler divisions.
BMW Motorrad made ~163K 2-wheelers last year, including scooters, and has 3700 employees (they're 2.8% of the employees in BMW Group... less than half the employees that BMW's financial services division has).
Honda made close to 20 million 2-wheelers last year... more than 2 orders of magnitude more.
It's hard to find the total number of Honda employees working on motorcycles, because they're split up among so many countries, but the Honda motorcycle/scooter factories in India alone have ~2500, so it's a safe the total is well into 5 digits.

[JaimeC]

This looks like what BMW intended with their "Electric Boxer:"

https://electricmotorcycles.news/psyche-the-lover-from-curtiss-motorcycle-company/