When Kawasaki strapped a supercharger to a Ninja, everyone went wild for the most powerful production motorcycle ever put together. Now, with a new EICMA release, it seems Honda wants to update that spirit into an even wilder form factor: A V3 engine with an electrically-driven supercharger.
A V3 engine is wild in the world of cars, but it’s less absurd for bikes: We already have V-Twins in cruisers and V4s in MotoGP, why not split the difference? In fact, this isn’t even the first V3 that Honda has put together — its early-’80s race bikes get that honor.
The wild addition here is, of course, the electrically-operated supercharger. Electric superchargers never really took off in cars beyond snake oil Amazon kits — though electrically-assisted turbos have started to creep in to the market — but the smaller displacement of motorcycles could be a saving grace for battery-powered forced induction.
The EICMA engine appears to be an early rendition, given the lack of power or even displacement specs, but there are a few details Honda’s released. The engine is water-cooled and sits with its cylinders 75 degrees offset like the old RC212V MotoGP bike, though Honda claims it doesn’t need an intercooler. The supercharger itself should run cooler than a comparably-sized turbo, given the lack of exhaust gases in play, but it’ll be interesting to see how those intake air temperatures look once these engines start hitting the road.
Honda hasn’t yet said what bikes will get the new engine, other than “larger displacement models in the future,” but I’ve already got visions of this in a new Fireblade dancing in my head. Please, Honda. That would be so cool.