Gilera's parent company Piaggio have been rumoured to be developing the biggest scooter to date by marrying together their existing 850cc, 90 degree v-twin bike engine and a Suzuki Burgman type CVT automatic gearbox.However, to general surprise, what we've seen first at the Milan motorcycle show is this engine with an "electronic power-assisted transmission and an automatic clutch" in a rather tasty prototype naked bike, the Gilera Ferro. An automatic bike sounds a crazy thing to do in the rather conservative world of motorcycling, but bear with us as it really makes quite a lot of sense.
One of this years must-have track accessories has been thumb push button power-assisted gear changers (eg the Kliktronic quickchanger system, made up the road from us), which gives ultra fast and ultra reliable gear changes. Ultra fast means about 40ms, which is less than 10% of the time we mere humans take to manually change gear, so the engine spends more time driving the rear wheel, saving up to half a second on the quarter mile time. Conventional manual changes also seriously unsettle the suspension, but a quickchanger is so fast that the effect on the suspension is much reduced. Ultra reliable means no more dangerous false neutrals at critical moments.
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