From the category archives:

China

By 2010, China and India will produce a combined total of 36 million motorcycles per year. Let me repeat that, … 36 MILLION motorcycles PER YEAR!
That number was buried in a news item this morning about a new microcontroller chip for motorcycle engine management systems. These chips precisely control the fuel/air mixture, ignition and who [...]

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NHTSA Examines Imported Motor Vehicle Parts

by Paul Crowe - "The Kneeslider" on 7/18/2007

in China, Motorcycle Recalls, Motorcycle Safety

What happens when a foreign company simply refuses to recall unsafe motor vehicle parts or equipment? The NHTSA began thinking about that problem in light of recent events. Last month, a recall was initiated for tires manufactured by Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber Co., China’s second-largest tire maker. Hangzhou exports tires to FTS (Foreign Tire Sales), a [...]

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The German Roots of Yamaha Motorcycles

by Paul Crowe - "The Kneeslider" on 6/19/2007

in China, Motorcycle Business

With Yamaha recently winning a court case against the Chinese manufacturers who copied the Yamaha scooter design, and even the Yamaha name, and an earlier case against Patriot Motorcycles over the Yamoto brand off road bikes they were selling, it was interesting to look at the history of Yamaha itself.
I was digging again in the [...]

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China Builds and Sells Fake Yamaha Scooters

by Paul Crowe - "The Kneeslider" on 6/13/2007

in China, Motorcycle Business

Zhejiang Huatian, China’s largest scooter manufacturer, was fined $1.1 million for selling scooters under the Yamaha brand name.
The Chinese company, Zhejiang Huatian, registered a shell company in Japan’s remote Ishikawa prefecture in 2000 under the same three characters used by Yamaha to render its name in Chinese. This Japanese shell company then signed a licensing [...]

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Chinese Motorcycles – Growing Fast

by Paul Crowe - "The Kneeslider" on 3/26/2007

in China, Motorcycle Business

This really isn’t news to anyone, we’ve written about Chinese motorcycles many times but it just seems like things are moving faster now. Here at The Kneeslider, email arrives almost every day from one Chinese company or another announcing their new motorcycles or motorcycle engines. If you follow their link you’ll find one of thousands [...]

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Tank Sports, another one of the many, many Chinese motorcycle companies we’ll be hearing a lot more about in the near future, has tested both a 150cc and 250cc version of their motorcycles for use with E85 ethanol.
After 7 months of research and development along with 3000km of road testing, Tank quality control has inspected [...]

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Dodge Tomahawk Replica Update

by Paul Crowe - "The Kneeslider" on 9/6/2006

in China, Motorcycle Builders, Workshop & Tools

After our post on the Dodge Tomahawk replica, we received a comment pointing out these were for sale on Alibaba as the X Racer. Well, that’s true, but it gives a misleading idea about the one we had in our post.
I had a phone conversation with Howard Dorf, the builder of the replica in the [...]

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Dodge Tomahawk Replica

by Paul Crowe - "The Kneeslider" on 9/3/2006

in China, Motorcycle Builders, Workshop & Tools

Doing my usual ebay cruise, this caught my eye, hey, it would catch yours, too, if you saw a Dodge Tomahawk listed. I started thinking Chrysler put their concept bike out there for sale but then I looked a little closer and saw the word replica. What we have here is a half scale Dodge [...]

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