Agree. To my mind all non-Chinese manufacturers, irrespective of where they're based, need to sit up and take notice of this, as the budget commuter segment is by far the biggest volume seller (especially in Asia) and China/India are moving towards getting this market completely sewn up. Back in the 60s/early 70s Honda used their dominance in the small capacity/budget end of the market to finance their move into the larger capacity, premium end of the market, and that could be what China/India are doing.Potter wrote: ↑Sun Jan 29, 2023 4:53 am The only real value proposition with scale is cheap daily transport in developing countries, so I suspect that these large Chinese and Indian companies will continue to produce cheap bikes on a large scale for that. At best they might make an NR750 type of bike just to show what they can do, but I don't expect them to go chasing a European premium product market, it doesn't make sense.
And if motorcycle sales in the lower end of the capacity scale turns out to be a race to the bottom, China/India will undoubtedly end up as winners.