The one big gap in the TVS motorcycle lineup in the recent years has been the lack of a 125.
Well, today that gap gets closed because this is the new TVS Raider,
that's right. The Raider, it turns out, is not an ADV, it's not 200 or a 300, it's a 125cc commuter.
Now that's a tough market to enter, so what has TVS brought to the knife fight? Let's find out.
Now the story of a 125cc motorcycle in India, obviously is one, of cost
and this costs about Rs. 77,500, that's the starting price ex-showroom Delhi
and the second is, it's supposed to appeal to a very young bunch of people,
people who are going to college, people in their first jobs, people who've just gotten married.
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What TVS is saying is, they wanted to create a 125cc commuter with sporty intent,
so, what has TVS done?
And let's start with the engine. TVS built a 124.8cc engine, the same as the Ntorq with the
bore and stroke that's same as the Ntorq with a three valve head, that's same as the Ntorq, but TVS
insists that this is a brand-new engine and not a single part is common between the Ntorq and the
Raider and that makes sense because this is a very different product. What I love about this engine
is its refinement is just epic because whether you are at idle or at redline, it is just completely
without vibrations, that was lovely, it's also an extremely light motorcycle so the acceleration's
actually quite good, TVS claims it is the best acceleration in class. In terms of power figures,
TVS have benchmarked the market really well, because this motorcycle is about half a bhp more powerful
than the SP, which is the Honda, that is, the most dominant sales player in the market,
and the NS 125, which is the newest player in the market. But what I really enjoyed riding it
was in power mode, obviously, in which the engine revs out nicely to about 8500rpm,
it feels really smooth, performance is linear, the gearbox is pretty slick. It's not unusual
for a TVS to do all of these things, but to see it in 125cc class motorcycle come together so well,
I was really happy with that.
Now that the engine goes into a pretty familiar chassis,
there's a single downtube and the engine is a stressed member of the frame and it comes together
really well because TVS have done a smashing job of this too. So if you look at the steering angle,
it's 26 degrees, which is not a ultra-sharp motorcycle, but because it is so light,
the reactions of this motorcycle are absolutely epic. Today at the track, what happens here is,
there's a really long right hander, and can become difficult to stabilise a motorcycle, especially
if you're going so fast that you've not a lot of acceleration left and that's exactly what happened
to this. So between the lightweight, the absolute amazingly reactive chassis and that speed,
initially it was a little difficult to control the motorcycle, but 99.9% of the customers of this
motorcycle will never see that aspect of this, what they will see is a very light, flickable,
responsive motorcycle that cuts to traffic so easily and so smoothly, that I think this will
be the absolute bomb in traffic in the right hand. And I love the fact that, that doesn't come at the
expense of ride quality because TVS clearly has learnt a lot of things about suspension, their
last few bikes, suspension has been absolutely insane and this motorcycle also shows a very,
very plush sense of suspension. There aren't really many bumps at the TVS racetrack,
so I can't tell you exactly what it will feel like in the city, that's a story for later, but the
promise of the ride quality from this motorcycle is also very good, combine that with comfortable,
slightly sporty ergos, a very, very spacious seat, there's actually a lot of space on this
motorcycle, I'm surprised by how much space there is, I think TVS are on to a very, very good thing here.
What the motorcycle doesn't get obviously is ABS or a rear disc because this is a 124.8cc
motorcycle, it's not a 125, so it doesn't have to have ABS and that brings us to the features.
And when it comes to features, the Raider is actually pretty well loaded.
But, before we go into anything else, let's talk about connectivity options and this particular
Raider doesn't have any and I'll explain that in just a moment. What it does have
is a reverse LCD on this, which means there's a black background and white characters on it
and it's absolutely densely packed. It's got a rev counter, it's got the gear position indicator,
it's got little arrows that tell you to change up or change down for economy, it's got an indicator
that tells you whether in eco mode or power mode, it's got a indicator to tell you the automatic
start/stop, which TVS calls ISS, the International Space Station, no, wait, Intelligent Start Stop
system, that is built into this, so, there's a lot of stuff going on in this little dash but,
to TVS's credit, it doesn't feel like overload, it feels well-designed and thought through and
you very very quickly learn to see the basics and tune out the stuff that is not important to you.
Above this will be a new Raider model which is not currently on sale, which will actually have
a 5-inch colour TFT display, obviously that'll be more expensive, that will have Bluetooth,
it will connect to your app, you'll be able to get navigation, control on your phone and all of those
things, but that model is still out in the wind, we're still at least three, four months away from that.
Below this Raider model, there is the base model, that's the one that starts at Rs. 77,500,
and that doesn't even get the front disc, it has a drum in the front. So in that sense TVS
is covering their bases, you can get the cheap one with both the drums, you can get the middle model,
which is this one, and you can get the top model later with the connectivity options that
you expect from your motorcycle today. All three will have a USB port, and it's a normal USB port,
so no USB-C cables or any such fanciness required, which means all of these motorcycles will be able
to charge your phone. There's also a little tray under the seat where you can store some amount of
doodads and the seats themselves are pretty large, so as I said, this is a spacious motorcycle.
Of course, after that comes the question of the headlight and you've got an LED
headlight a standard, you've got some very nice looking DRLs, they're quite distinctive looking,
you've got these shiny levers, which I actually really like the look of. So in
that sense TVS has done the spectacular thing here by making this not feel like a 125cc motorcycle.
So when you see the motorcycle for the first time, A) you get the impression of quality
B) you get the sense of a large motorcycle, almost as if this is a 150cc motorcycle
and on that front, given the price, I think TVS are on to a very, very good thing here.
So the Raider with its LED headlight, rear monoshock and all of that, plugs the gaping
125cc hole in TVS's bike lineup, and I think it does it really well. In this segment,
the big motorcycles are the Shine SP, which of course has been a segment leader for a long time,
watch out, and the NS 125 which is more powerful than this by about half a bhp, but this motorcycle
is quite a bit lighter as well, so watch out there as well. Would you like us to do a comparison
test between these three motorcycles? Would you like Varun Painter to be in that story with me?
Do leave us a comment. Now the other thing that I want to mention before I go,
is that we haven't made a Raiders of the Lost Ark joke at all throughout this entire video
and the reason for that is because this is supposed to be a motorcycle for the Gen Z
and I'm not sure that they've seen all the Indiana Jones films.
If you have, leave us a comment. Thank you so much for watching, this is PowerDrift, please
do hit the four buttons that the Gen Z loves to hit, that subscribe, the bell notification icon,
like and share and if you do that, I will thank you so much. Thank you so much for watching,
this is PowerDrift, that's the Raider. Calling Mr. Raider, calling Mr. Vain.
Isn't there a song that's sort of like the Raider song, something like that is there, no?