Technology, technology and more technologyI’ve never been to the famous Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas – famous as the showcase for cutting-edge new tech, and trend pathway to the future of consumer devices and diversions.
But INTERMOT and EICMA this year showcased the ever-closer link between electronics and the motorcycle ownership and riding experience.
We’ve been accustomed to rider communications systems for several years. Vendors have been enhancing the social experience of motorcycling for a long time, and being able to actually hear your passenger trying to talk to you, or talk to those you are riding with, is something that we are now able to take for granted.
We have lived with the increases in security tech and tracking for some years now too, and device management has become a hot ticket in recent years - with specialist electronics businesses reaching beyond their traditional core battery charging and care competencies to charge our smartphones, iPlayers and tablets, to power our GPS, heated clothing and audio systems.
"integration of proprietary systems will have huge effect"
Now we are seeing a next generation of tech-thinking for riders, including endeavours to make the long dreamt of heads-up displays (HUD) concept a reality, some by using “augmented reality” (Nolan/Sony for example). In Givi’s case, windshields are the “screen of choice”, with their Samsung collaboration looking promising.
Then there is the now burgeoning area of airbags (congratulations to In&motion and IXON in particular for taking the step of severing the umbilical cord), and the area that I personally think is of massive importance and potential – the e-call market.
I use the term “market” advisedly, because whereas demand and value still remains unproven with some of the emerging technologies, there can be no doubt whatsoever that the whole area of intelligent systems and emergency calling is going to emerge as a massive market, a major boon to generations of riders moving forward, and one that future generations of motorcycle users will wonder how on earth their predecessors managed without … it will become something as basic and all pervasive as colour TV screens.
As regular readers of IDN will know, at the end of last year, 2015, we gave our “Product of the Year” award to a German business – Digades – for having the first “aftermarket”/retro-fit e-call system available. They are so far ahead of the game that at this stage there remains a “who to call” deficit in much of Europe, but that won’t last long - with such systems becoming mandatory on new cars soon, and the safety spotlight being shone on motorcycles at this time, get ready for it, it is coming, ultimately, to every motorcycle and every rider.
The integration of proprietary systems by OE motorcycle manufacturers will have a huge effect, but it seems to me that the ultimate destiny of such systems is into the realm of the individual, the realm of portability, and into integration with the other devices and communications that future generations (indeed many Millennials) are already finding impossible to imagine life without.
There are obvious dangers of course, those of system and technology platform reliability, of rider distraction, and of operator efficacy. Let’s face it – the abilities of all riders and of all tech users are not equal, and system integration and dependency will bring as many new challenges to enjoying the ride as they will bring benefits.
For a start, conditions will be one big challenge, and voice recognition will be another one – that’s even before you get your head around the challenges of password and PIN recollection, Iris or finger print recognition, and system security!
With apologies to the businesses and brands I haven’t name-checked, and the initiatives and tech opportunities I haven’t mentioned (Rapid Bike and others in the tuning market for example), the post analogue world that will be defined by the dawn of digital will be simultaneously a very different and a very familiar one in which people will still want to have fun, ride motorcycles and live long, healthy and wealthy lives.
Those who think change is their enemy should look around them and take a reality check – change is the natural order of things, it is the permanent process of the natural world, so why would or could it not also be so in the artificial world of man-made objects.
After all, our entire system of commerce is entirely dependent on obsolescence and being able to make the sale over and over. Once these new technologies and gizmos have matured, served their time and themselves been superseded, the same underlying dynamic of parting consumers from their hard-earned cash (or credit line) will still beat away at the heart of that which drives all developments, technologies, and “progress” – profit.
In the depths of the recession, systematically scouring the booths, aisles and halls of our industry’s primary shows became quite a depressing, but always essential part of our annual routine here at International Dealer News. I remember writing here in this column about the glaringly apparent death of innovation, the apparent collapse in R&D spend and new product capital.
Kudos to our motorcycle manufacturers though, because whether it has been by recycling the past with retro bikes and styling scramblers, so-called “adventure touring” (the modern twist on there being bad or no roads and too many people!), by eschewing the existing cookie-cutter mindset and embracing something called “individuality” (who’d have thought!), or by allowing production technologies, materials science and electronics (see, history can repeat!) to develop product offers fit for “new gen” riders, their success in re-inventing our wheels has laid down a platform of modest growth that the “independent” sector can also now bank.
As this edition of IDN went to press, we were still a few days away from seeing EU new registration market statistics that included October in a 10-month YTD analysis, but the one sparkling little factoid that had emerged was that the “Big Five” GISFUK markets (Germany, Italy, Spain, France and the UK) were running at +7.5 percent in motorcycle registration terms for the first 10 months of 2016, with Italy and Spain showing year-on-year growth of over 10 percent each.
Quite rightly there has been much caution and concern as to whether the early signs of modest growth that have been emerging in the past three and a half years would prove sustainable, robust and something that can be built on. Well, it looks like the market’s growth is indeed robust and steady (for now at least) and, to judge by what was on show at (mostly) busy and vibrant INTERMOT (especially) and to a lesser extent at a rather smaller EICMA, the “aftermarket” is also now poised to start clawing its way back from its own near-death experience and start “taking it to the bank” as well.
