Kawasaki

Kawasaki Heavy Industries has plenty of experience mass-producing industrial robots, and now we get to see some of its early progress into service robots, multi-purpose humanoids, and, for some reason, a rather silly-looking ride-on robot goat.

Each January the Las Vegas motorcycle auctions set the tone for the entire auction year. This year there was only one – Mecum – but it will be the biggest and most important motorcycle auction of 2022, with the most evident trends. Here's what we learned.

Kawasaki has shoehorned the supercharged 1,000cc engine from its wild H2R hyperbike into a heavy-lift autonomous cargo helicopter, and has now demonstrated a robotic system for loading and unloading it without exposing humans to those big blades.

The collectible motorcycle marketplace has snapped back into action with Mecum belatedly wrapping up its annual January Las Vegas auctions on May 1, following a four-day-sale. The results are intriguing, particularly if you're a Harley Knucklehead fan.

We've already seen electric motorboats and even ferries, but a considerably larger battery-electric vessel should soon be in operation. It's called the e5 tanker and interestingly enough, it will be used to deliver conventional fuel to other ships.

Hybrid dual-powertrain motorcycles can't possibly work ... Or can they? Kawasaki has thrown its considerable resources behind the problem, and has now released video footage of a very tidy-looking hybrid prototype on a dyno.

The 300-horsepower, supercharged 4-cylinder engine from the Kawasaki Ninja H2R has found a new home in an autonomous compound helicopter Kawasaki has been flight testing. And like the H2R, this K-Racer aircraft will be much faster than its peers.

The importance of the secondary motorcycle market was acknowledged this week when Kawasaki announced it has begun manufacturing reproduction cylinder heads for its milestone Z1 900cc motorcycle from the 1970s.

Aeons ago, when the world made sense and Cosby was still on the box, Kawasaki made a 250cc sportsbike that revved sky-high and captured hearts. Now, it's resurrecting the mini-banshee with a shrieking, 17,000-plus RPM inline four called the ZX-25R.

Japan wants to move towards a clean, hydrogen-based energy economy, but to make that happen, it'll need to import liquid hydrogen from elsewhere. Meet the Suiso Frontier, the world's first liquid hydrogen transporter. It runs on diesel.

Kawasaki has taken a 49.9 percent stake in fancy-pants Italian brand Bimota, and is resurrecting it with a monster motorcycle. The Tesi H2 adds Bimota's famous center-hub steering and chassis to the wild Kawasaki H2 supercharged motor.

Kawasaki has finally dropped the supercharged super-naked it's been threatening to unleash for several months now. The Z H2 melds the looks of recent Kwaka nakedbikes with the 197-horsepower lunacy of the blown H2 motor, and it's not for the timid.