ON THE RECORD: Phillip Habsburg

With the recent acquisition of Husqvarna, a fledgling electric-bike program, and new lightweight streetbikes built in cooperation with Bajaj in India, KTM's R&D department is hopping! Some 330 people are currently employed in the division, and that number is expected to grow to 400 now that it has added another floor to the building. On a recent visit to the factory in Austria, we had a chance to meet with Phillip Habsburg, head of R&D, and hear what the future holds.

What we see for Husqvarna is to attract a different kind of customer. We know that in some countries KTM has a market share of 50 to 70 percent, and we think we can attract some new customers who want to have another product with some Swedish heritage. The plan is to have both brands on the same platform; it's not feasible to have two completely separate motorcycles. In the past we made Husaberg more enduro-style, but with Husqvarna we decided to go more deeply into motocross and supercross. There the product will not be that different because the only thing that counts is lap times. It will be easier to see the differentiation on the street side. We showed the 701 Supermoto at EICMA, and there are two more Husqvarna streetbikes that are a future vision of what we want to do.

We are 100 percent committed to steel frames. The problem with an aluminum frame is you need much more space, and you want to make an off-road bike as small and light as possible. We have five different off-road models with gas tanks ranging from 6 to 12 liters. If you go to an aluminum frame, it's almost impossible to create a big fuel tank in a normal shape. Another thing is flex is quite hard to get right. Development of a steel frame is also much easier. With aluminum you have different castings and machined pieces, and with steel you just cut the tube and weld it. You can make many different versions in a short time, which makes it faster to develop new things for production.

**Steel is real: Although KTM says steel frames are right for its bikes, aluminum prototypes

are still being studied.**

On the Adventure we have off-road ABS, but we will not see it on a competition bike for some years. In the off-road mode we switch off the rear completely, and the next problem is you cannot compare the wheel speeds front to rear. As for traction control, the main problem for off-road is there are so many different kinds of tracks—deep sand to very hard dirt. It's much easier to find the right setting on tarmac. Also it is quite tricky to have the right setting to jump the bike because the front wheel leaves the ground before the rear. When it is introduced it will be through the sport department. One of our motocross teams is testing it already.

The RC8 hasn't been updated in a long time. We are working on a replacement, but it will not be street-legal; it's not planned to race in World Superbike. For 2017, I think the RC8 will be built, and afterward there will be a track bike that we can offer to everybody, and there will be a limited version that meets MotoGP rules. We are already competing in Moto3, and the plan would be to have the same concept for MotoGP where there will be some teams that can rent the bikes.

The Freeride E is our first electric bike, and there will be a lot more to come. We are working on some different models with different capacities and also for the street. It's expected that by 2050, 70 to 80 percent of the world's population will live in huge cities, so we need this kind of urban mobility. Also in China and some places in Europe they have these city bans where it's not allowed to go inside with an internal-combustion engine. Also in Europe it's forbidden many places to ride off road, and the one thing that we want to do with the Freeride E is to bring off-road riding closer to the cities.