Very quiet in this section guys and girls. So I thought I could throw in a link to an article about a new model ADVENTURE bike(oh god how i HATE that meaningless expression...) This one is however coming from China and its an offspring of the KTM and CFMoto cooperation.

800 cc, 94 HP, 500-550 ibs, 19’ and 17’ wheels and top notch specs and components. Its way to heavy and powerful for my like of an overland bike - but who cares what I mean...

What do you guys and gals think?

https://www.cycleworld.com/story/bik...he-2021-800mt/

(Photo taken from Cycleworld)

Attached Thumbnails

 

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In the end everything will be fine. If its not fine its not the end....

Chinese bike fully equipped with proven modern western tech components. Build more for road touring than blasting dirt tracks. Design is a matter of taste and video comment proves that a lot is learned or inspired by KTM and Huskie. Competively priced for asian markets (5700-8500€ without shipping,duties, distibution costs).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqo0arWqWJE

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Not sure we're quite at the tipping point yet with the China now vs Japan back then comparisons but this certainly looks like another step on the way. These things never mirror themselves exactly but the hordes of small capacity virtually throwaway bikes coming out of China in recent years does feel a lot like Japan in the 60's. So also does the 'they can only copy' and 'I'll never buy any of that bowl of rice a day junk' comments that seem to accompany every Chinese bike launch.

Sure it seems to lack a bit of sophistication but with KTM holding their hands I suspect they're on a fairly rapidly rising technology curve. Whether they've left it too late to do much with i.c. engines is another matter (and one the Japanese didn't have to worry about)

Good points, as for bikes they are not there yet, but they are getting there. Good luck to them.

KTM uses
* Indian enginee in 390
* Chinese 800 cc engine

Triumph is produced in Thailand

Benelli is onwed by Chinese company. That is owned by another Chinese company Geely. That cooperate with Swedish Volvo for cars.....

BMW 310 is a mixture of TVS(Indian) and BMw

......

So where is the quality coming from ?

Design?
Production ?

Probably mainly from production.

Desing and features are easy to do.
To produce qulity is something that Honda and Toyota learned way back.

Intersting development. If we can cheaper bikes.
With good enough quality.

My view is that if company like BMW, KTM, Honda, Triumph....
Builds a factory in China, India, Brazil.....thay can create quality.

But the pure Chinese bikes still have a long way to go.
E.g Zontes looks good. Has all the features. But does not last for long.

But Royal Enfield and TSV have been in the busisness long enough, to have learned their lessons. RE news model have quality

But that is my view of today.

Quality comes from the desire to build a brand and be able to sustain what you want to do as a result. The Japanese wanted western markets and to win races and adopted Demmings ideas when the Europeans and Americans were building top-down corporations.

Once you have the culture it doesn't matter where the factory is. Nissans best factory is often the one where British Leyland once made awful vehicles.

My dealings with Chinese owned companies suggests that they have no such desire. When they get caught telling lies about things like material certificates and actions taken to fix problems they just close down, change the name and re-open with the same attitude. The only desire is instant profit.

They seem to apply the same attitude to their workers.

Needless to say I will not buy a Benelli, BSA, Norton or whatever other old brand they buy to hide behind. Zontes and Geely I will watch for a change of attitude.

Andy

That´s more a very friendly and optimistic description for a situation with a chinese coercive partner. Where would China be today if they hadn`t establish the Partnership Enterprise Law in 2007? We shouldn`t forget that China is since 2015 on its Made in China 2025 Plan. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025

It`s right that they did a lot of copy&paste when they startet. But today China is very closed to the technological frontier of next generation telecommunication technologies, big data and supercomputers.(It´s the single country in the world with a realtime population monitoring system which is actual transfered into a Social Credit System!) High-speed railways, aviation, electronics, machinery are big fields of chinese national investments and export/sales prove their technology capability.

Yes, China was a fast follower but they have allready shown that they create innovations. In near future they will become a global leader in technology and innovation. It´s just a question of time how fast they will do and how helpfull the pandemic could contribute. By the past 15 years of industrial and economical chinese developement you can assume that they have an opportunity to run the clock faster as western countries will do.

I also think that chinese motorcycles will have a chance to bite into foreign markets. BMW and KTM are aware of this and they only share knowhow about old technology and smaller engines with China. But chinese motorcycle brands will try to conquer western markets like they are still doing with SSVs and ATVs e.g. in Austria and Eastern Europe.

And this will work as in the past: Bring a product to the market to target price sensitive buyers and attack competitors. Consumers will choose a lookalike design and agree to little disadvantanges in terms of quality because of personal savings. For me just a question time and future ecomomical developement of western countries. And a strong motivation to me to buy less as posssible chinese products.

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I have no doubt the Chinese will become market leaders in a whole range of economic arenas as the next few decades pan out. Countries come and go as their economic fortunes wax and wane because of a whole range of circumstances - luck, technology, war, politics, politics, population, - a whole range of them. They came together for the UK in the 19thC and the US in the 20th and I suspect, unless things go disastrously wrong in China for whatever reason, the 21stC will their time in the sun. It doesn't mean it's a nil sum gain - that as they rise, we all sink.

As a child I can remember a very strong anti American movement in Europe, fuelled mostly by economic resentment - "over paid, over sexed and over here", remember that? Then it was "Jap crap" when Honda et al did for the UK bike industry in the 60's /70's, and rallies where you were invited to smash up a Japanese bike to show solidarity with the salt of the earth Triumph collective (who were on strike - again). Now it's, well, pick your own dubious Chinese working practice designed to take bread off the table of honest working westerners. I'll leave it to the economists to tell me whether the Chinese really are employing unacceptable economic methods, but even if they are they wouldn't be the first. Our western economic history is littered with 'shameful' episodes that underpinned our national fortunes - many of which are still echoing today. For my part I won't be boycotting Chinese made goods but I will apply my usual value for money criteria to them. At the moment there's very little in the bike world with a native Chinese stamp on it that would attract me but if I was buying a drone for example that would be a different matter.

China is today selling so much of differnet things, that US is scared.
And try old protecting methods that does not work.

Myself, I am from telecom /Mobile area.
Where we once looked at Hauwei as cheap copies with low quality.
Today thay are leading,or one od the leaders in this area.
Providing high quality equipment, to good prices.
For networks it is Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia. Competing

And US has banned Huawei for "security" reasons.
But that is bullshit. It is a pure trade war against China.
(The risk is not in the network,it is in from teh application. Facebook, google and Microsoft are teh companies the collect information about us)
And they force Europe to do the same.

And for consumer electronics...made in China.....

So I would not be surpriced if the Motorcycle market looks very different in some years. If they want to produce for export. Maybe the internal market is large enough

«The only desire is instant profit»

EXACTLY - thats my experience too with chinese stuff. Mobile phone chargers and cables that stops working within a week or two. Hiking shoes that fell apart within the first weeks of use. And the list goes on and on and on..... How hard is it to make such relatively simple products as above mentioned with a certain quality and reliability? Not to mention more complex products such as motorbikes?

Maybe chinese stuff can be made reliable if western or japanese/korean companies add in their own staff and quality controlers at every link of the product making chain. But that desire for instant profit and all that comes with that seem to be build in every chinese person and company....

A very few exceptions there are such as this CFMoto company. I wish it would be more but I have my doubts...

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In the end everything will be fine. If its not fine its not the end....

What a pity I can't find a photo of my Rolex watch. Or something close enough to a Rolex on the outside anyway that it fools the uninitiated. It only cost about £20 so I'm not that bothered it only lasted about 5 yrs before the winder broke. It's costume jewellery really - it looks the part but it's worth nothing. And where did I get it - yup, that's right, China.

When we were last in Shanghai (about 10yrs ago now) we'd wander through the western branded goods malls looking at the genuine 'aspirational' goods on sale. Every big brand you've ever heard of, all on sale at prices not that dissimilar to their western price tags (give or take a bit of import duty, profiteering etc). So to someone (like me) on a reasonable western level income, bl**dy expensive. And if I found them expensive imagine how a Chinese shopper on probably less than 10% of that average western wage saw them. These things were not just aspirationally expensive, they were over the horizon expensive. It didn't change the desire for them though - the marketing was doing its job. So what they did what any businessman seeing an opportunity would do - they made their own.

A couple of streets away from the glitz and glamour and western prices of the Nanjing Road you could visit some bland, featureless (and often windowless) brick buildings where a marketplace of small traders were selling copies of western goods to the local population. None of this stuff was very good (although my £4 branded wallet lasted until recently) but it was good enough if all you wanted was to look the part / impress the neighbours / get something vaguely functional at a Chinese level price. Yes there were all sorts of legal infringements and yes the traders knew it (a lot of them shut down quickly when cops patrolled the aisles) but mostly these malls were tolerated by the authorities. So a lot of stuff we're seeing from China now is absolutely in this tradition - slap a western label on it for marketing purposes but use a 'copy mall' approach to what's inside.

Whether things have moved on in China's domestic market I don't know but I'm still seeing the same 'caveat emptor' mindset in action. A country that allows explosives to be carted across a city centre in the top box of a moped, Deliveroo style, isn't going to worry too much about an underspecced wire in a phone charger.

No Rolex, but here's a picture of another watch I bought for a few quid in a Beijing mall. When this one packed up I did miss it. It even keep reasonably good time

There is fine difference between products Made in China and products Made by China. It`s nearly impossible to avoid products Made in China in certain industries. But it`s possible to take a discission not to buy products Made by China. At this case it is better to go for Made in China. This difference demonstrates how strong and how far the influence of China riesed in the past 15 years.

For sure there is a way of american thinking based on own experiences in a long history about classical trade war tools.
But in case of network tech which will be the gate to every kind of knowlegde, I still remember the unanswered question about undefined chips in computers and network hardware. The future problem isn`t about a spy chip itself, the issue with this tech is generally that you have to use a piece of hardware which cannot be fully controlled by the user due to proprietary software running in it.
https://www.google.de/search?q=unkno...4dUDCAg&uact=5

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A "Polex" watch is a bit of fun and if people think better or worse of you for having one, that's their problem unless it makes you late.

Something marked Rolex that isn't is a con trick, not that harmful, but leads to knock-off brake actuators and car mirrors that kill people by not working as designed.

A correctly organised quality management system can handle rubbish but the cost of filtering the good from the lethal offsets the savings of buying it. You cannot buy any product without Chinese input, but that doesn't matter when someone of any nationality gets the systems in place. You either sort the parts or sort the supplier.

I've sent O-rings back to China. They sent them back as their own replacements. We tipped paint over the boxes and sure enough the next shipment had paint covered boxes. These were just incompetent forgers. You'll all be glad about this little battle of wills, the O-rings went on valves for gas tankers. Blow up the ship bringing gas in and the heating goes off for a few million people.

When I see a five year old Chinese branded bike with less rust than a same age Japanese branded, Thai assembled, Chinese parts one I'll be closer to buying one. Not because I'm precious about paint, but because I'll expect similar care to have been taken with the brakes, suspension and engine.

Andy

Chinese manufaturers are capable of making quality products if they want to and certainly can with outside supervision, my Honda XR125 was made in China and after 35,000km I can say it is Honda quality.
They are also getting better at counterfeiting, you can buy knock off £10,000 Rolex for £1,000 that can fool some experts they are so well made, although whether they would last for the decades that the real thing should is another matter, only time will tell so to speak.
I am not sure I have the confidence to buy a bike from a Chinese manufacturer such as the one this post is about yet but if in a few years they can demonstrate the ability to build quality bikes under their own name will consider it.

I just read an article about CFMOTO 800 in MOTO jornal (Portugal)

CFMOTO has produced KTM bikes for the chineese market.
And the engine in the CFMOTO 800 is the KTM 790 engine.
They have had a joint venture for 10 years.

So it is a mix of China and Austria.

So it looks more like a KTM made in China, than a chinees bike.
Even it is a mix and somewhere between.

The article says the the price is not know.
And that the bike will be availible 3rd quarter this year.

Let's wait and see the price.
I would guess that you get all the extras included.
That you spend all lot to add, if you buy a standard KTM, BMW, Honda, Triumph.....