Technological advancements of the last decade.

[Llama-Farmer]

[Llama-Farmer]

[mentalboy]

[Charlie]

I think motorbikes massively lag behind in technology when compared to cars, but they do cost less and the high end motorbike market is much smaller than cars.

Guess the whole emissions rules muffle () our perception of improvement. Bikes are producing the same/slightly more power while producing less emissions.

I still think modern bikes have crap fuel economy, they should be getting way over a 100mpg! Modern cars get better fuel efficiency than some bikes. Although cars are boring to drive and bikes aren't.
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Past: Honda x8rs, Honda City fly, Honda Hornet 250, Honda VFR750, Yamaha xt600e.
Current: Honda CBR929RR & Yamaha XT660Z Tenere

[Wafer_Thin_Ham]

[Amber Phoenix]

SatNav / GPS.

Granted, not bike specific, but I don't recall the last time I went on a ride out on an unfamiliar road and didn't whip out phone to check position on map and work out where I'm going next. Hard to imagine it's only been 12 years since TomTom released their first SatNav...

I totally accept a GPS isn't a must have, but it's reached a point of such ubiquitous that it's become the default thing to use when even slightly unsure of route, let alone lost. Even if more fun can be had from just exploring.
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Beginner Biker Adventures Blog
Yamaha FZ6 S2 2007

[Shinigami]

Pinlock!
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Current: Honda City Fly CLR125 2003 Honda CB600F Hornet 2008 Yamaha FZ6 S2 + 1991 Kawasaki GPZ500
"Once you realize what a joke everything is, being the Comedian is the only thing that makes sense.

[dydey90]

I definitely think it's all the development that's gone into 400cc sports bikes

Seriously though, I think earbuds are a big one. They comfortably fit under a helmet for music/satnav. They've been around since way before I could ride, but I wouldn't want to try to fit in a full set of headphones under my lid.
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This post is probably not serious and shouldn't be taken literally.
Past: CBR125,ER6f NINJA 650, ZZR600 Current: VFR750

[Bubblin77]

[iooi]

Scratch resistant visors.

Anyone who rode in the 70's & 80's will know that you only had to touch the dammed things and they were scratched. So much so that Bob Heath brought out a glass visor (plastic backing). Same that it reduced vison so much....
Now you can wipe your fingers over them and its fine.

Overall. A increase in suspension and handling...
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Just because my bike was A DIVVY, does not mean i am......

[c-m]

[Llama-Farmer]

[Pigeon]

Hi-viz's are 50% higher in viz than they were 10 years ago.

[djrikki]

[chickenstrip]

I dunno what's improved in the last decade - never had anything newer than a 2002 bike, so apart from tyres, I'll just have to take everybody's word for all that ABS, TC, remappable ECUs etc

And as for extras, Sat Nav, GPS and the like, I still use paper maps

[Rogerborg]

[Charlie]

[Teflon-Mike]

I remember the 80's.
Folk bought new bikes because anything old enough to have an MOT was a technological dinosaur.
Road-Bikes had been making as much power as GP machines for a decade, and kept pace with them for most of the 80's.
Everything had more acronyms emblazoned on it than a Motivational Management seminar hand-out, boasting of the incorporated 'innovations'.
Tyre technology went from tubed bicycle tyres to modern tubless, multi-compound radials, in barely a decade.
Engines went from push-rod twins to water-cooled multi-valve fours.
Fuel injection was already on some production bikes, even at the start of the 80's.
Forks didn't know if they were inside out, upside down or coming or going, with various alternative 'front end' designs.
Frames went from steel bicycle tube cradles, to fabricated aluminium 'chassis', with all manner of designs in between and beyond.
A lot of the technology that was being championed in that decade has fallen by the way-side.

To my eyes, the last two decades, the boffins have lost the 'chair' to be replaced by the accountants at the design reviews.

'Value Engineering' has been the name of the game; bringing performance levels down to the minimum the market will stand, and reducing make costs to maximise margins; making stuff 'cheaper', not 'better'.

I would say that there hasn't been ANY significant 'innovation' in the last decade.

[deadwolf]

https://www.motorcycleclassics.com/~/media/Images/MCC/Editorial/Motorcycle%20Classics%20Database/1993/Britten/1993%20Britten%20V1000/Britten-V1000-IMG_5422.jpg

The fact that this bike came out in the 90's makes me suspect that technology has actually regressed as opposed to progressed since the last decade.

Still waiting for the next big engineering game-changer. Modern bikes look, well, modern and sharp and all that, but it's like their chassis and fairings were meant for bikes from twenty years into the future, but forced onto the same old front forks and swingarm configuration.
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Motorsapien Art

[Hokum]

Tbh the next big thing probably won't have an ice in it... electric will make huge changes to bikes.
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Sane: To know when you are doing something crazy.

[sickpup]

[slowlydoesit]

The most important technological change over the past decade is the one to which we riders pay very little direct attention: emissions control.

The Euro II standard was introduced in 2003/2004 and required that larger motorcycles emit no more than 5.5 grams of CO2 per km. The previous Euro I standard was 13g/km. Then Euro III, which was introduced in 2006, mandated 2g/km.

1999: Euro I - 13.0
2003: Euro II - 5.5
2006: Euro III - 2.0
2016: Euro IV - 1.14 (as far as I can make out)

In other words, a new model bike in 2014 that is compliant with Euro IV is putting out about 9% (less than one-tenth!) of the CO2 that a 1999 bike would produce and 20% or one-fifth of that generated by a 2003 Euro II-compliant bike. And there have been similar targeted cuts in output of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and hydrocarbons.

You can't achieve reductions of that scale without affecting the way the engine makes power. This explains why a lot of bikes may appear to have made no progress since the 1990s in terms of power output. The designers are running just to stand still. Despite this, the fact that a modern supersports bike will blitz an equivalent bike from 1994 is a tribute to how much effort the manufacturers have put into R&D to mitigate the effects of emission control legislation. The point is that there's a huge amount of technology being directed at bikes, just not much that's visible on the surface.

But there are limits to what can be achieved. In theory, we'd all like bikes to be lighter, faster, more economical and less polluting. The problem is resources. Once at a meeting with Toyota management I asked why Toyota doesn't spend more time on "XYZ"; I forget exactly what we were discussing, it may have been diesel engines. Their answer, paraphrased, was this:

"We may be the largest car manufacturer in the world, but even we have a finite number of engineers. It takes us less than 30 hours to build a good car, but it takes 30 years to build a good engineer."

Everybody has finite resources. Honda, Yamaha everybody. We may not agree with the way they way they use those resources and we can and should vote with our wallets. But a lot of what the bike manufacturers do is determined by what regulation requires them to do, not what their managements want to do.
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Kawasaki KMX200 with broken fixed powervalves and a stutter

[Rogerborg]

[slowlydoesit]

[krarkol]