Motus MST-01: Direct Injection, 2 Valves per Cylinder, 1605cc, 140hp, Made in America

[Asphalt & Rubber]

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This article comes from AsphaltandRubber.com
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Motus Motorcycles has trickled out a bit more information about its Made in America MST-01 sport-tourer, giving CycleWorld their obligatory first look. What do they have to report? A 1650cc V4 motor with two valves per cylinder that features direct injection, which sums up to equal 140hp. More on that and photos after the jump.

If you forgot everything you know about the Motus MST-01 to-date, and approached the motorcycle motor from a mechanic’s perspective, you might mistaken the V4 motor for half a Corvette. Laid out just like an American-built V8, the large reason for the similarities is because the Motus MST-01 motor was designed by Katech, makers of the Corvette Z06’s 600hp V8 powerplant.

For us, looking at the Motus spec sheet, with its two valve push rod design, forwardly located water pump, and longitudinal configuration, it’s exactly what we’d expect to see from a company that talks in car every day.*Designed to be like a small American sports car, we see both strengths and weaknesses in this design philosophy.

Direct Injection has been around for ages, but just recently it’s become all the buzz in the auto industry. Refined by the American auto manufacturers, this method of getting fuel into the cylinder (the name really says it all) provides for greater efficiency in cylinder combustion, which crudely equates to getting more out of less. For instance, this translates into six-cylinders, which can now do the work done by larger eight-cylinders, etc.

Theoretically, Motus’ gasoline direct injection (GDI) system should allow the Motus MST-01 motor to make more power than a traditional two valve motor of similar size. However this doesn’t necessarily translate into comparisons against modern four valve motors.

Despite the MST-01’s nearly 450cc displacement advantage over the Honda VFR1200F’s four valve motor, the MST-01 makes nearly 20% less power. Of course maximum horsepower output is not the be-all end-all of judging the success of a motor’s design, and we have yet to see how smooth or torquey the MST-01 could be, but it’s an interesting insight into the Motus mindset.

The MST-01 will be the first production motorcycle to use direct injection, which is a technology you can bank on seeing trickled into the motorcycle industry over the coming years. However as with so many other American motorcycle startups, the hot rod mentality that brought us “there’s no replacement for displacement” seems to still prevail. This thought process, which has become the ethos for American manufacturers may resonate well with the baby-boomer generation, but is also indicative of the single-minded line of reasoning that collapsed three two of America’s auto conglomerates.

Is Motus (Latin for motion) moving forward or spinning its wheels in the past? With Motus squarely pegging perhaps the industry’s pinnacle of forward-thinking (at least in the ICE realm), the Honda VFR1200F as its mark to beat, the Alabama-based company certainly is setting the benchmark high. Time will tell if they meet that mark.













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[ITSMESTEVE]

That's a lot of motor for 140hp.I guess it pulls like a 14 yr old from idle?

[TLR-Brendan]

I guess if you're building a touring bike torque is what you want.

[BikePilot]

I like it - a bit different thinking and just might work well. I'd guess it has the potential to use drastically less fuel than most current motorcycles. My biggest concern is packaging - its hard to tell, but the motor might be a bit on the tall/wide side of things. Borrowing a cue from the corvette isn't the worst thing they can do. I can't think of any other cages with the same sort of power and efficiency (430hp and 26mpg or 505hp and 24mpg or 638hp and 20mpg).

BTW I think it is quite incorrect to say that a focus on displacement led to the downfall of the US auto industry. Funky regulations more than anything else did it. Even looking at displacement and fuel economy, the US makers tend to make vehicles that are more efficient than the others rather than less if you look at the areas where they focus (typically trucks and larger vehicles - the us makers for the most part only messed about with small cars after forced to by arcane rules dictating that all mfg's meet average fuel economy specs regardless of whether one specialized in econ-boxes and another trucks). This prevented the us mfg's from specializing exclusively in their area of strength. Then the second big problem was the unions - they were insanely powerful and went to great lengths to drive up mfg'ing cost and reduce productivity.