by Gabrielle DeSantis

Just like cars, trucks, and SUVs, some bikes just aren’t available in the US. Quite a few of these forbidden-fruit motorcycles hail from Asian and Australian markets, which have different needs than US buyers. Yamaha is no stranger to these kinds of two-wheeled rides. And with the upcoming Yamaha YZF-R15M sportbike, that list is one motorcycle longer.

The R3 isn’t the smallest-capacity sportbike Yamaha offers—at least, outside of the US

Here in the US, Yamaha’s most affordable sportbike is the entry-level YZF-R3, aka ‘R3.’ A rival to the Kawasaki Ninja 400, the YZF-R3 packs a liquid-cooled 321cc inline-twin engine. It delivers 36 hp and 20 lb-ft of torque at the rear wheel, enough to let the 368-lb bike go 0-60 mph in 5.2 seconds, Cycle World says. However, while the YZF-R3 is a small-capacity bike by American standards, Yamaha has sportbikes with smaller engines elsewhere.

Over in Europe, Yamaha has the YZF-R125, which sports a liquid-cooled 125cc single-cylinder engine. It ‘only’ makes 15 bhp and 9 lb-ft of torque, MCN reports, but it also only weighs 313 lbs. And it packs the same kind of features as the YZF-R3, including an inverted fork, an LCD dash, and an aluminum swingarm.

But that’s not the only single-cylinder Yamaha sportbike. In markets like India, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Australia, Yamaha offers the YZF-R15, now in its third-gen V3 form. At 304 lbs, it’s slightly lighter than the R125. But the R15 V3 has a larger engine, a liquid-cooled 155cc single-cylinder rated at 19 hp and 11 lb-ft of torque, Autocar says. And unlike the R3 or the R125, the R15 has a slipper-assist clutch.

However, while the Yamaha YZF-R15 has that particular performance add-on, in some markets the small sportbike gets a slight spec downgrade, RushingLane reports. The new R15M trim, though, might change that.

For those who want a sportier Yamaha YZF-R15 V3, there’s an R15M on the way

The updated YZF-R15 v4 could be just around the corner. Here’s what latest spy shots reveal: https://t.co/f2P3gOFb6R

— Autocar India (@autocarindiamag) July 24, 2021

Recently, a camouflaged Yamaha YZF-R15 was spotted riding around India. Initial speculation suggested that this was the next-gen R15 V4 model, RushingLane says. However, recent homologation documents state that this new bike is the R15M, a higher-performance version of the regular R15.

Mechanically, the R15M is essentially identical to the standard Yamaha YZF-R15. But instead of the Indian-market model’s conventional forks, the R15M has upside-down ones. And it comes standard with ABS, something the US-market R3 only picked up in 2021. Plus, the R15M has a new look inspired by the just-released YZF-R7 and standard Bluetooth connectivity. That last feature is something the R3 doesn’t offer.

Could we ever get a bike like this in the US?

In India, the standard Yamaha YZF-R15 starts at the equivalent of $2030. Even if the R15M costs double that, it would still be about $1200 cheaper than the base US-market YZF-R3. With its approachable power output and low price, it has the makings of an excellent beginner sportbike.

Unfortunately, Yamaha has no plans to offer its 155cc or 125cc sportbikes in the US. Small-capacity sportbikes, such as the 17,000-RPM Kawasaki ZX-25R, make sense overseas due to taxes based on engine size. And because cars are so expensive in places like India and Vietnam, which have tight urban roads, inexpensive, sporty motorcycles are in high demand. That’s not really the case in the US.

So, for now, American riders interested in high-revving, single-cylinder sportbikes will have to look on in envy at the R15M.

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The post Yamaha’s YZF-R15M Is a Single-Cylinder Sportbike the US Can’t Have appeared first on MotorBiscuit.

by Gabrielle DeSantis

We’re so used to reading things in Miles per Gallon (MPG) that new EV range figures are hard to conceptualize. To be fair, it could just be me, and I’m very bad at math. However, type “EV Range” into Google, and you’ll get lots of acronyms like MPGe, SAE, etc. But what does that mean? What’s MPGe, what’s SAE, and how do they relate to numbers given by automakers like GM, Tesla, and Ford? Well, it’s time to find out. Buckle up.

EV range often isn’t intentionally misleading

Part of the issue is that we’re trying to, like fuel economy, put a hard number on something that can change based on a number of circumstances. Like a company’s stock value, a vehicle’s potential range, be it gas or electric, is constantly changing. Moreover, these changes, like hills, traffic, and speed, are incredibly hard to average out. For example, let’s say I want to drive a Tesla Model S from Denver to Moab, Utah. That’s a 350-ish mile drive. Importantly, that drive is almost all downhill after a certain point (the Continental Divide).

So, it stands to reason that my hypothetical Tesla will get better range on the way there than back because the climb up the Divide is shorter than the one down it. The Tesla will use less battery going to Moab than coming home. I know this because I’ve done the drive in a gas car, and fuel economy is always worse on the way back. Tesla says the Model S will do 359 miles on a charge, but I bet that number drops on the way back up America’s tallest mountain range.

We all have to recalibrate now

It’s not Tesla’s fault. Those numbers will change no matter what. They’ll also change as a battery ages, just like a cell phone won’t hold a charge as well after a few years. Presently, the EPA estimate, which is widely considered to be the number for EV range, is based on the SAE J1634 test procedure. Basically, those SAE tests attempt to account for as much variance in circumstances as possible.

And that variance is often why we see range numbers different than what automakers give us. Some, like Tesla, simply use that number. Likely because of criticism from the public regarding the discrepancy in test numbers vs. real-world range. Truth is, this will take all of us some getting used to. Essentially, you know roughly how efficient a vehicle that gets 30 MPG is. Based on my travel patterns, I know that’s about 300 miles on a tank of gas on average. That changes person to person, and we’ll all have to just learn that feel for EV range as we have for gas range.

Eventually, this will all be normal for us

However, the good news is, that as more people learn that “feel” I keep going on about, we’ll eventually know intuitively what 300 MPGe means as it applies to each of us in our daily lives. Maybe for you, that’s about a week between charges. For someone else, that could be a few days. Thankfully, that new shared human knowledge will eventually put an end to range anxiety as we know it.

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