Hello, and welcome to PowerDrift. Today's a big day because KTM has finally revealed some details
about the new RC series, their first major update since the RC came out eight years ago.
So this is a big event. In this video, we'll talk about what's new on the engine, what's changed
on the frame, and there's a lot what's changed on electronics, and there's a heck of a lot and what
the launch times and prices should look like. Before we proceed, I do invite you to hit the
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Now obviously, we cannot begin this story without the design because the spy shots have caused quite
a furore with a lot of KTM enthusiasts saying, what the heck have they done? But, I will say this,
I refuse to judge motorcycles by how they look in pictures, I would like to see them in the flesh
and when I see the pictures though, the first thing I notice is that the side profile of
the motorcycle, apparently inspired by KTM's Moto GP bike, actually looks quite smashing.
The problem comes from the front end, where the old KTM used to have a very narrow, sharp and
very striking front end and this time around Kiska design's done something completely different with it.
I do like the idea of integrated indicators that are part of the front screen, I do like the
idea that there will be LEDs as standard, but I don't know with the 125 or the 250,
which Bajaj has traditionally avoided putting LEDs on, we don't know if those motorcycles are
going to get the LED headlight or not. But overall, I would like to see the motorcycle
in the flesh so I can work out whether I like the design, I don't like the design, but in any case,
that is the design, so whether you like it or not, that's the motorcycle you will be buying next.
But I am going to mention two functional points here. First, fast engines tend to produce heat,
so if you think that, that is a deal breaker, you're going to have to look for unstrained
relatively slow motorcycles as a choice. In my case, I wear riding gear everywhere
and I don't seem to notice the heat so much. The second point I'd like to make is that,
the seat height can be a challenge for many riders, many of us are not very tall, but, the
thing to know about tall motorcycles is that you can learn to ride them, it's an additional skill
that you must acquire. If you paint yourself into the corner where you say it's too tall for me,
you have painted yourself into the corner, it's not really the real version of events because
if you think about it, Danny Pedroza, most of the guys who ride motocross professionally,
they're all not exceptionally tall people, although they ride exceptionally tall motorcycles
and I believe firmly, that if they can do it, you can do it and now let's talk about the engine.
One of the implications of the new design is a 40% larger airbox and that's not
a small change. A larger air box means the motorcycle can potentially breathe better,
and that can result in more newton-metres as well as more horsepower. But does it really happen?
KTM has not actually revealed the figures yet, but we do know that the 390 is already making
1Nm more than before and we fully expect that more linear torque will be a feature of the
125, the 200 and the 390, when they are launched. The other change to the engine, of course is the
exhaust. The tip of the exhaust does look like a Moto GP exhaust but, do you really like the
way this new end can looks? Do leave us a comment. And now let's get to the really juicy bit because
KTM has done a lot of work on the chassis and that makes me really, really excited.
Now let's start with the ergonomics. One of the problems you've always had with the KTM RC,
especially riding out on the street is that the clip-ons were low and that meant a lot
of commitment, that meant a lot of pain in your wrist if you didn't know what you were doing.
That could be fixed, because what KTM has done this time, is raised the clip-ons a little bit
and left a little bit of adjustment in them, which means you can run a higher, more natural,
less strenuous riding position, or you could be the boy racer that you've always wanted to be and
lower the clip-ons a little bit and enjoy a far, far more sporty tuck if you wanted to. How does
this work on the street? Obviously, we'll have to figure that out later when we get the motorcycle.
Right under those clip-ons, obviously is the frame of the motorcycle and the chassis is
where KTM has done the maximum amount of work as far as I can tell. So the main trellis frame,
it visually looks the same, there's no data on whether they've upgraded or downgraded the
stiffness of the frame or not, so we don't know, but the subframe is definitely new and it's a kilo
and a half lighter. If you think about it, the centre of gravity of your motorcycle is roughly
between your knees, a little bit below your knees, in fact, and any weight that is far away from this
centre of gravity that can be reduced, will make the motorcycle feel more dense, more controllable,
so that's a good change to happen. But that's the least of it because what KTM has also done
is they've finally eliminated the steel carrier on the brake discs and that means that kilo
saved in the brakes, this is a big deal. It's a big deal because the rotors obviously rotate,
and things that rotate generate other forces apart from their weight itself. So if we can take away
weight from those, we gain an extra amount of performance from it. To give you an example,
I'm running KTM cup rotors from Galfer on my KTM, which have aluminium carriers for a steel rotor
instead of the steel carrier and that makes a huge difference to how fast my KTM Duke 390
steers. The biggest change for me are actually the wheels, where you lose almost three and a
half kilos between the two alloy wheels and that is spectacular, because the conventional wisdom
states, that if unsprung mass is reduced by one kilo, you effectively lose the equivalent of
three kilos of sprung mass and feel. What you're talking about here are parts of the motorcycle
that are below the springs, wheels, brakes and stuff like that, and parts of the motorcycle that
are above the suspension, which is everything else, that's bodywork, the fuel tank, clip-ons,
the meter console and all of those things. So if KTM has lost four and a half kilos, from unsprung
mass on this motorcycle, that effectively means that the motorcycle will feel something like 12
to 14 kilos lighter when you sit on it, when you try to steer it and that is a massive,
massive improvement for motorcycles this small, with this kind of performance. For a sport bike,
that is incredible. In fact, I'm already wondering if KTM's wheels will actually fit my own KTM Duke,
because I think this will be a fantastic upgrade, especially at KTM's usually low parts prices.
You have to wonder, how these wheels were lightened because clearly they're not forged,
that is a very expensive way to make light wheels. If these are cast wheels, and they should be,
then obviously the one way to make them lighter is to take away material from the wheel, which brings
into question, are these strong enough? This question only needs to be asked for one reason and
that is because the internet is full of stories complaining that KTM wheels break too easily.
And I'm here to say that, that's not actually the case, there's a riding error involved that
also needs to be factored in. To give you an example, my KTM Duke 390 is now eight years old,
I've ridden it as hard as I possibly can in all the conditions that have ever been encountered
on many of my rides and I'm yet to even dent them, and the big reason why riders make a mistake
here, is because they continue to brake into the obstacle rather than finishing their braking
before the obstacle and opening the throttle. The simple logic here, is that if you're braking and
then you hit a pothole while you're still on the brakes, the brakes have already consumed
most of the suspension. When the wheel hits this obstruction, what happens next is that the tyre
and the alloy wheel are the primary ways that this force can be absorbed and obviously, that's
not something that performance wheels are designed to do, therefore something has to happen, so they
either bend or break. The right way to do this is to finish your braking, no matter how much of it
is available to you, before you hit the obstacle and then just have a little bit of throttle on
when you go through the obstacle itself. What this does is transfers weight to the back of the
motorcycle, extends the front suspension and now the tyre, the alloy wheel, etc. have a lot more
suspension available to deal with that bump, which means, they are not the first targets in this line
of fire, the suspension is and the suspension is usually capable and strong enough to handle this.
But, that's not all either, because all of the suspension units have actually been retuned as
well, for what KTM calls a more sporty ride and we'll figure out what that means on the street.
But the RC 390, at least globally, now gets fully adjustable suspension, so you get rebound on one leg,
compression on one leg, you get preload and rebound on the rear shock, which means you can
really fine tune how your motorcycle feels on the road.
Yes, I know. So the next question is, will KTM bring adjustable suspension to India?
When we had asked KTM India about adjustable suspension on
the 390 Adventure, the answer we were given, and it's not an unreasonable answer, is that these
suspension units have clickers on them, rather than screwdrivers or other ways to adjust the
suspension, which means somebody in a parking lot adjusting their hair in your mirrors could,
in theory, ideally sort of, mess with your clickers and when you get back on your motorcycle,
your rebound and compression settings are completely off and that is A) An inconvenience,
B) It's annoying and C) In theory, it would also be unsafe. Should KTM do the adjustable suspension
on the RC 390 at least and I say vehemently they should. If the RR 310 can do it, I'm seeing no
reason why KTM, a company that claims to be ready to race, should not be able to do it. If however,
this concern is genuine, that these clickers sitting out there in public will cause problems,
maybe KTM needs to leave the choice to us and offer it as an accessory part that we
can buy and add back to our motorcycle later. Obviously, adjustable suspension is superior to
fully adjusted suspension, as it were, but why shouldn't I have a choice? And with that, let's
move on to our next section and KTM's in a lot of work here too, and that would be electronics
and features. The first thing that you will see about the new electronics, obviously, is the new
screen. So the Duke 390's colour TFT screen has now been incorporated into the RC series as well.
Globally, all of the RC's run that screen, in India, we don't know, because KTM obviously has
the LCD unit they're using on the 250 and for all you know, that might be the screen that gets put into
the RC 125 and the 200 for the Indian conditions. The arrival of the screen obviously means the
arrival of Bluetooth, connectivity to the KTM My Ride app and all of those features as well.
But, KTM has also added the supermoto ABS, as they like to call it, which is switchable ABS on the
rear wheel to the package and that is interesting because if you're riding at the track, you want
the safety of having some amount of ABS available at the front wheel, should things go wrong,
but you still want the rear to be able to do its own thing, to be able to get it off the
ground if you're going to brake that hard, all of those things become possible. So as a sport bike,
it's a good selection to have. And now let's focus on the big motorcycle here, the RC 390. The RC 390
now has the ride-by-wire throttle but KTM has not really used this to do anything like riding modes
or anything. Again, I would argue that a 20-25bhp motorcycle may not actually need riding modes,
but a 45bhp machine with a rain mode, especially things that are as aggressive as KTMs generally
are, I think that may not have been a bad idea. But that's not all, because the RC 390's
system uses an IMU, there's also other additional features that have brought in, including cornering
ABS and traction control, and there will be an up and down quickshifter, but probably as an option.
Again, in India, we don't know how KTM is going to spec the motorcycle when it goes on sale,
so we don't know if the quickshifter will be standard, like it is on the Adventure, adjustable
suspension may or may not be there as standard or an accessory, all of those details, we will
work out closer to the launch, and that brings us right to where we want to be, which is to talk
about price and availability. Now globally, we are expecting KTM to officially unveil the motorcycles
and start the process in January and they should go on sale in most parts of the world like Europe,
America, etc., in the month of March 2022. But India is likely to be ahead of the curve, so we
are definitely going to see the RC 125 and the 200, hopefully within this month itself, the question is,
whether the RC 390 will be there with the 200 and the 125, on sale, within this month's phase or not,
and I have a small feeling, that the RC 390, given how big it is and how much equipment it has,
that is going to get pushed a little bit and I'm going to guess, December, January maybe,
is when the RC 390 actually goes on sale. So, in terms of timeline, RC 125, 200 now,
and my guess is that the 390 comes later this year or early next year. In terms of pricing,
I am expecting a small price hike in all the three motorcycles. Everything's prices have gone up in
terms of motorcycling, so I don't see why the RC would be an exception to that. I'm going to guess
between Rs. 10,000 to 15,000 extra over the current models is what you'd end up paying. The
question, of course, is the RC 390 has a lot of kit, it has adjustable suspension, it has Bluetooth, it
has traction control and all of these things, it has the quickshifter which is optional in Europe
and we have to see how KTM India figures out how to spec the motorcycle, how to create the standard
equipment specification for India and how that plays out. So that's what we know about the KTM
RC series. I would like to ask you two questions. One, what do you think about it, in terms of
design and in terms of all the specification that's going on and the small price rise that
comes with it? What do you think about the new wheels? I'm very, very excited about those.
To me, the traction control, the electronics, the styling, the engine updates all don't matter to
me, just the lightest wheels are going to make a massive difference to how you ride the motorcycle.
But, tell us what you think. Thank you so much for watching. This is PowerDrift, stay tuned,
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