WehavereallybenefitedfromtheecosystemoftheMidlandsandthisis the
startingpointofmuchmorebeautifulthingstocomefromRoyalEnfield.
YourfeelingabouttheRoyalEnfieldContinentalGT 650 beinga
proper“ton”bikethatdoes 100 milesperhour?It’sa normyou
wereaimingforwhiledevelopingthebike.
It’snotanoutrightsportsbikeandwewantedpeopletohavefun.Inthe
designbrief,wesaidthatit mustdo 100 milesperhour.Initially,thiswas
supposedtobea 600-ccmotorcycleandourengineerssaidthatit just
mightbeabletodo 100 mphor,maybe, 99 mph.ButI insistedthatit has
tocrossa tonwithouta problem...andnowit does.Wewantour
customerstoexperiencea differenttypeoffun.
Currently,everybodyis talkingaboutelectrificationof
motorcycles.
Electrification is here. And from a regulation perspective, the world is
certainly being pushed towards electrification. From a technological
perspective, the price of batteries and electric powertrains over the next
decade is going to come down. There are certain applications and the
looming deadline and regulations that are going to kick in. So, we’re
certainly working on it, but we’re not looking at being the first in the
market. We’re learning and observing. People are losing money hand over
fist currently. Our intention is to take this opportunity to look at certain
aspects of urban motorcycling first because immediately we’re not looking
at long-distance e-motorcycles because I don’t think that is going to be
electrified in a hurry. But short to medium distance motorcycling is what
will get electrification in the next five to seven years in some form. This
gives us the opportunity to go into the really fundamental and that’s what
we love doing — to go to consumers, to understand, look at how people
use products, and see how things fit into their lifestyles. We’ll try and come
up with different ideas and solutions that stand out. We would rather go
back a few steps than taking an existing motorcycle and sticking in abattery
and electric motor in it. Of course, we’ll have a prototype like that running
some tests but that’s more for laughs. We take this as an opportunity to look
at urban mobility in a totally different manner right now.Whatdifferentversionsofthe 650 Twinsshallwegettoseeinthe
future?Maybe,a scramblerora touringbike?
We believe that the Interceptor 650 roadster will remain the mainstay of
our 650 Twins and we have the café-racer Continental GT 650. There are
plans to have other models in the future, but we are now very slow and
deliberate on these things because we take a lot of time and effort for the
development of new models. This is a great platform and we are working
on many different variants, but I suspect that’s still a few years from now.Whatabouta big-bore,single-cylinder,largercapacity
Himalayan?
The Himalayan is a fairly new model and since the BS-IV version it has
become a spectacular product today. Just a few weeks ago, I was riding the
Himalayan all over London and I was simply enjoying it. The bike is
really picking up momentum in India and around the world now. That’s
our focus right now. I’m not sure if the 650 Twin engine would work for
the Himalayan. And a bigger single-cylinder Himalayan is not on our
radar for the next three to four years. Currently, all our resources and
engineers have come together to meet the BS-VI regulatory requirements.WhatcanweexpectfromRoyalEnfieldintermsoftheBS-VI
models?
The most important thing is that our bikes will meet the BS-VI
requirements. For some motorcycles, there would be a direct upgrade
from existing to BS-VI version and you won’t see much difference on the
motorcycle. While some models will see a more dramatic change than
what we have today because they were due for upgrades anyway. There
will be different levels of upgrades on different motorcycles and we’ll meet
BS-VI well in time. Most importantly, BS-VI is forcing us to move
entirely to fuel-injection which gives us the opportunity to bring the level
of amazing refinement that we have in our Twins and Himalayan to our
other range of motorcycles as well.88 Bike India August 2019 http://www.bikeindia.in
interview SiddHArtHALAL