Furion Motorcycle’s Awesome Hybrid Rotary Concept
Rennie Scaysbrook | May 8, 2017
The Furion Motorcycle’s concept not a reality—yet—but we live in hope.
Bespoke French motorcycle design house Furion Motorcycles have unveiled CAD images of what it hopes will be the first hybrid streetbike.
The concept bike shown here uses as 654cc wankel rotary engine mated to a 55hp electronic motor with five lithium ion batteries mounted in the rather small seat to produce a claimed 180hp, but that’s not the interesting part. That part comes from the torque, which is said to be in the realms of a staggering 151lb-ft, roughly 45 percent more than a KTM 1290 Super Duke R and available much, much lower in the rpm range.
The Furion runs a traditional six speed gearbox, but the company hasn’t stated if there will be any energy recovery systems or what the range of the 55hp electric motor might be if you were to use electric power alone. It also hasn’t stated if the wankel engine will charge the batteries as you ride.
Hybrid technology is being developed and utilized in the automotive world to great lengths in everything from your standard Toyota Prius to the BMW i8 and McLaren P1, but has yet to be explored when it comes to the car’s two-wheeled cousin.
The reason behind this is packaging on a motorcycle, especially a naked/sportbike, is exceptionally tight and hybrid motors take up more space than a traditional motorcycle engine. That’s part of the reason Furion went for the small and compact rotary engine design, one that we haven’t seen in motorcycle production since the Norton Rotary of the late ’80s and early ’90s. Furion believe they can shoehorn their hybrid motor into the steel trellis chassis, ultimately creating a machine with a wet weight of 461lb.
The design looks oddly similar to that of the previous generation Z series from Kawasaki, but that’s where the similarities end. The world’s premier car manufacturers have shown hybrid technology can be fun and exciting when mated to a petrol-powered engine (a McLaren P1 at full song give off an incredible sound, and a Norton Rotary is one of the best sounding engines ever created—ever), and it’s high time the world’s motorcycle manufacturers started exploring alternative means of propulsion in order stay relevant with growing technologies.
What do you think, would you ride a hybrid motorcycle with 151lb-ft of tire-frying torque?
Source: Furion Motorcycles