Plan on buying a new scooter from Honda in the future? Check out the engines they unveiled on the weekend.
Supposedly, the new 125cc and 700cc motors are more fuel efficient than older Honda units – not that scooters are known for bad gas mileage. But they reckon the new 700cc unit should get about 77 mpg in the new Integra super-scooter they’ve built around it (to be unveiled at the EICMA show in Milan). That’s supposedly about 40% better than its competition.
That’s pretty impressive, but the motor’s dual clutch gearbox should be the real difference-maker here – combined with increased displacement, it should help the water-cooled inline twin handily beat its opponents in the power department.
Honda’s also included a “Learning” function for the motor, that helps it adjust its shifting pattern to match the roadway, since mountainous roads and city streets require different inputs.
The new 125cc motor (a water-cooled, four-stroke single) also supposedly gets better fuel mileage than its competition, as well as reduced emissions. Honda say they worked on developing low-friction technologies, as well as combustion and transmission efficiency (it’s a CVT tranny) to achieve this goal.
Very nice 125cc engine. Neat to see roller rocker arms, idle stop system and needle bearings on the rocker arm shafts.
The mechanicals sound like a very good change. The dual clutch transmission is a huge step forward for this type of machine. I’ll reserve my opinions of the styling until I see it in the flesh. I do like the design of the VFR 1200/CBR 250 but not sure if it carries over too well in the scooter deoartment. The addition of the side cases as shown has me wondering about undersReat storage capacity.
I’ll wait for the Integra Type R…
Interesting…