Motorcycle.com dropped episode 37 of its Bore and Stoke podcast, with hosts Troy, Ryan, and Dennis asking whether today’s bikes have gotten too complicated for their own good. The trio spent the hour picking apart features like Honda’s E Clutch, Yamaha’s Y AMT, and the semi active electronics now showing up across manufacturer lineups. Their question was simple: where does useful tech end and over engineering begin.
Dennis opened the show with a rundown of recent industry news, covering an updated Honda CBR600RR possibly headed to the US, the BMW F 450 RR and F 450 R, and new entries in Kawasaki’s Versys 900, KLE 650, and KLE 500 range. From there the conversation shifted to gadgets riders actually want versus ones that just add weight and cost. Radar cruise control got debated at length, along with electronic suspension and whether TFT dashboards have gone overboard with menus nobody uses.
Later segments turned toward repair shops and home garages. The hosts wondered aloud what wrenching on a motorcycle might look like two decades from now, questioning if today’s flagship models will become prized classics or turn into bricks nobody can fix once the software locks them out.
The episode closed with a lightning round of keep one, kill one picks and an open call for listener opinions on which tech features earn their keep and which ones should disappear. Full video runs just over 80 minutes on Motorcycle.com’s YouTube channel.
My two cents…
E Clutch, Y AMT, radar cruise, they poked it all. Verdict? Some gadgets earn rent, some are just expensive clutter. Remember when bikes just started? They also worried future classics might become unfixable bricks once software locks you out. Yikes.
Click on the link below for the full article:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjTuixDJ8EY
