Honda CR ELECTRIC PROTO in All Japan Motocross Championship 2023 Round 8, Saitama

Good to see they aren’t giving up on mx !  Really if the stark is as good as all the reviews make it out to be,  electric will be 50% plus of the mx market in two to three years.  Especially if Honda joins the party.

You would have to assume Honda have already had a lot of private testing, I wonder how much of that time Trey has had to get comfortable on it.

MX1 class?

Race is Oct 29th

This sounds pretty cool.

Things get lost in translations sometimes. Will Canard actually be racing? Or just doing an RC/Triumph kind of 'ride at the races'? If he's racing that will be just as cool as it being an electric CR that is being raced.

Be way interesting to see some specs.

Canard will be racing in 450 class.

https://www.mfj.or.jp/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/第8戦エントリーリスト初版10月6日.pdf

There is no way the big manufacturers were going to allow Stark to take market share. They all are worried somewhat. 
 

Just think eMX is the future. Almost baffled on the new Triumph and Beta entering the market and not waiting for ePower releases. But I’m on Vital so don’t much of that at all. 🙃

Awesome news.

It's been teased, first as Mugen, then as Honda, since 2017. Can't wait to see where they're at 6 years later. I guess that with the Varg commercialization they finally found the need for more communication about their electric effort.

Direct competition with ICE is the way to go, now that the Stark Varg has got podiums in Arenacross UK with Thomas Do, can Honda do the same in the Japanese championship? Can they do better?

Also does anyone know how long are all Japan main events? Is there a website with results from this series?

What length are the motos in the Japan nationals run? It will be interesting to see it go a full 30mins race pace. Would be huge

Seems like round 8 will be 3 heats 15min + 1 lap same as Japan opening round.

There is 15, 20, 25 and 30min motos in Japan championships. Weird consept…

Couple interesting things for me on that bike. Looks like they are staying with the cooling for the battery that they had on the Mugen prototype for one. The second is that the subframe has the same second brace on it as the HRC MXGP bikes, so that may indicate that's a feature coming on the next iteration 450 which I think is due in 2025 (apologies if that's off).

Does anyone know if you can eat the skidplate on the Honda?

I rode a stark last weekend and just like riding the Alta only way I would ever buy one is if I had a home close enough to people that I need to keep the noise down on my home track. Even then I'd probably just ride a 2-stroke again with a better silencer for noise.

Honestly didn't find anything special about either of these bikes thay makes me wanna run out and get one outside of the less maintenance and instant torque. The RC car sound and constent sound of the chain I find gets annoying after a couple laps.

Its still not the future.. Just because it exists, does NOT mean its going to take over. Especially at the price tag of $3K higher than all existing 450 prices. And still need a generator and a lot of time at the track to charge it. Its a complete waste.

Will Honda design and engineer it to ensure there will be wear and repalcement items for the motor. A topic of disscussion for eletric is the reduced costs, pistons, clutchs, crank etc...figure Honda would not be thrilled to be losing money on parts, so will purposely design the electric motor for wear and failure components to matain ths revenue.

Damn that looks badass! I think the most recent hondas are the best looking crf’s weve ever seen. 

This is an interesting and bold prediction. 

We have a couple hundred Starks in the public's hands today, with no other manufacturer starting production in the foreseeable future that we know about, yet you predict electric will be 50%+ of the MX market in 2-3 years.  

I would take that alllll day over a stark. 

https://www.facebook.com/100064303195071/posts/pfbid02VDrW4VdLQwRKRhGj4…

That's a great prototype, but it's still really just a converted existing 450 chassis.  This works as somewhat of a proof of concept, but it's not nearly as optimal as what Stark and Alta did designing a chassis around the battery itself so that more space can be dedicated to it.  Just going off of the eyeball test I would bet that the largest battery they were able to fit in that bike was 4.5 kWh, while the Stark is 6.5 kWh.  It's going to be cool to see it run and they did a fantastic job on it, but I can almost guarantee that is not the bike Honda will be bringing to market when the time comes.  

We should be able to watch live on this channel on race day:

https://www.youtube.com/@motolive1994

Some heads are going to explode if Honda gives its e-bikes the CR moniker lol

Is it a competition racer?

This will be a very interesting test of emx bikes as well as what Hondas got cooking. Then again, they might tell trey to pull off at 15 minutes to keep everyone guessing.

Wonder if the battery extend under the seat at the subframe connection.

Does Trey win?

That happened much faster than I anticipated. They must believe in Stark’s potential a lot more than the Vital forum does. 

A universal truth of OEM's- they are motorcycle, car, or piano companies in the business of selling those things- parts are basically an inconvenient stepchild to most of them. Besides, a company like Honda will work out how much they expect to make per vehicle over the life of that vehicle- and you're going to pay it, one way or the other.

Sure the Varg being out there and 18 000 pre-orders must be quite an incentive to accelerate the development of their electric bikes.

I don't think the Honda is up to Stark's level yet, nor that it would be ready for production, but we should know more soon. These are exciting times.

Though I'm not holding my breath for Honda to release specs, it's been 6 years 

Every time I see any thread related to electric bikes I can 100% guarantee by the time I've opened it you will have posted, complained, and tried to shun it as much as possible. Kind of like a broken record. 

The fact that people are actually buying and riding them, today, proves you wrong.

You mean like when peoples heads exploded when they introduced the (then) all-new "CRF" ?  Imagine if they called it the "CRE" :-0

Is it just me but it looks like it is lower and longer in the seat through swingarm and rear wheel, sort of stretched out… probably just me but, I think it looks really good!