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In the second video in the series I discuss India’s possible rise to the top of the motorcycle industry beating China to the punch. Its a bit of a long shot but there are some positive signs that India is on its way to dominating everything motorcycle.
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India is currently just the cheap workbench for Western motorcycle manufacturers and RE, a hype in the West about a completely overrated motorcycle brand
So if Royal Enfield needs to take on China then they have to improve their service quality big time
Chronicles of solid, still the best motorcycle review platform out there
Someone needs to build a cheap 650 parallel twin that doesn't vibrant to outdo Kawasaki . They then might see just how badly they stuffed up.
Personally I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of the CF Moto 450MT.
Indian bikes such as Hero motocops , bajaj , and tvs has separate market in india and africa. That is low cc affordable bike. Eg. Bajaj palatina a 100cc bike that give mileage upto 75kmpl thats huge. People who look for mileage goes for it. Now they started colabarating with european brands to make premium motor cycles. In five year indian brands make affordable premium motor cycle.
Loving my KTM390 adv, a few years ago I would never have considered an indian built bike. The 390 is a hoot in the twisties and so light on the rough stuff. My other bike is a 2020 Africa Twin, I've been surprised at how enjoyable the 390 has been. I don't think this will be my last Indian bike. I cannot see myself buying a Chinese bike primarily as I find their politics alarming.
The Indian brand that has the highest chances of delivering quality the western brand expects is being left out. It's called TVS. The companies are tying up only looking at the sales, going by what name was more mainstream and Bajaj and Hero are a lot older companies that have sustained market making 100 cc commuter bikes in the old days. Their bikes are absolute garbage when it comes to performance. Bajaj is notorious for slipping on the road with how terrible their balance used to be in discover series. TVS is the only brand in India that has actually made a sport bike in the 300 cc category which can actually perform like one. Bajaj made the pulsar RS which looks immature, forget about bringing to the track and doing anything. Hero had karizma which is a joke in itself. These brands engineers don't have any clue on what a performance driven motorcycle is. Even their same engine capacity motorbikes of 150, 160cc always stay behind similar engine capacity bikes from TVS. TVS made Apache rr310 with the help of bmw, have their racing division and keeps trying and testing their products while hero and bajaj only care about getting you from point a to b. Quality is not their thing. BMW has a chance to tie up with TVS and bring new line of motorcycles for western markets, different from TVS's own catalogue and only TVS is capable of doing such a thing amongst all Indian brands that are not yet introduced in the western world
Harley is having problems here in the US with their riding base aging out. Kudos to Royal Enfield for seeing the future.
The first batch of CF Moto MT 450 is already sold out before it hits our shores
I think India is going to win this one over China.
1. Their supply chain is cleaner.
2. The politics of China, together with aging out of population, are serious negatives.
3. India is .ore open to innovation vs imitation.
China will never do what Japan did because China has no honour and cheat whenever and wherever possible, which is why they can’t be trusted, and their products are crap.
They can do it. The other market manufacturers will push them into it. Several bikes from India and China are competing now in the Dakar race. That's how you learn, race and R&D. In USA we only buy china when we have to. Just that simple. Big politics involved. American manufacturers, only bidding for the India market share and not so much for worldwide. But it's absolutely huge. USA is a strange sales environment. We can't get the bikes we want. Not I, We. Midsize ADV bikes are rare and just not being offered by the Jap. manufacturers. Also they may be killing that market here because of a lack of product. Strange. Royal Enfield has a full lineup here. We'll take a look after a year and see how they are doing along with the smaller Triumph models.
Politically speaking, India is just as bad as China.
I quite simply will not buy a Chinese-manufactured motor vehicle and I'm a Brit so I feel an affinity with India for historical, curry and cricket-related reasons. The only thing stopping me buying an RE is the continued wait for their 650 scrambler.
India manufacturing tooling is atleast 2 decades behind rest of asia for eg. Thailand, Indonesia etc.
I would question the premise that a company needs to pump out large cc bikes to be the dominant force. The future is going to be EVs, and Chinese infrastructure definitely has an upper hand in that space.
I think the motorcycling industry is in a very interesting place right now. For decades manufacturers have been releasing bigger capacity and more complex bikes as new models were released and we've kind of reached the pinnacle of that now. This has kept us die hards happy and it's what we've expected from them but it's also driven some new riders away from motorcycling. Yes, there's always smaller bikes offered but it more a perception of motorcycling in general. So now they've gone back to the beginning somewhat and start to release new smaller capacity bikes and try to entice new riders to the brands and in turn tempt them to newer and bigger models later starting the whole cycle over. Bringing back the "you meet the nicest people on a Honda" days. There must be some marketing term for this!?
I think this is where the Indians and Chinese are going to step in. All those millions of people riding scooters moving onto low capacity and cool "real" motorcycles that are proudly sold and ridden around the world. I've always been a fan of what royal enfield have been doing over the years. True underdogs and good on them.
Fantastic content! Thanks
Additional information:
Bajaj owns almost 50% stake in KTM
TVS owns Norton and also contract manufactures low capacity BMW
Mahindra owns BSA
Baby Aprilias are being made in India
From India, good stuff mate. It's all about quality, guess that's why RE is heading to Baja & then Dakar
The better question is, are people really that stupid to buy RE crap to save couple hundred bucks? Even couple thousand.
REs "best", and with that indians best motorcycle is a 450 single that was alredy built simmilar 30-40 years ago. So no, they have quite a ways untill they would have any real chance of "takeing the industry by storm". At this point China came out with 1200cc VTwin, 450 parralel twin, V4 800, many many V8s and V6s, many more straight 6s,… And there are engines built by China. So yes, the saying "china is the new japan" holds quite true. Also for some reason this video has a lot of missinformation about population, leaps, and who made/designed some of REs latest engines.
until this video, i didnt really think about the fact that im most interested in a CF moto450 or the Triumph 400. one china, one india. makes me think a bit more about things.
Aside from political reasons, I will never understand someone who chooses (at the same price, mind you) a RE Himalaya 450 over a CF Moto MT450. Like seriously?