Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd.

===What the Japanese Bayberry Trees Have Seen===   22. Backs to the Wall!    The testing to lap around Lake Hamana began in mid-September. After the No. 1 prototype had completed 1,200 km or so, our own in-house cylinders were ready, so we swapped them in and continued the test.    On September 26th, the president returned from a Tokyo business trip and surprised us by saying, “I want to make the announcement as soon as possible, so I want the preparations at the Komatsu Factory done by November 15th.” This was only part of what he had to say, too! The pressure on us to get the factory ready to start production rose daily and every passing day sent clear reminders to me of how precious time itself can be.    On October 4th, the official notification was made to the government office. On the application was “Product Name: Yamaha 125; Engine Type: YA-1; Engine Registration No. 540000” and other information. The “Y” in YA-1 was for “Yamaha” and the “A” signified “125.”    The next day, President Kawakami went to the factory and assembled prototype engine No. 7 himself. I think through this you can easily understand how deeply devoted the president was to this project and how hard he had worked to make sure he himself knew and understood firsthand how an engine was constructed.    Photo: Casting cylinders for the prototype YA-1    <continues>    #Yamaha #RevsyourHeart #motorcycles #racing #manufacturing #engineering #history #design   

Over the last few years, Yamaha produced a short but playful series of videos showcasing its Yamalube genuine engine oil.    Through the riveting workings of a Rube Goldberg machine, the first video in the series expresses Yamaha’s approach to developing Yamalube for its motorcycles, snowmobiles and more, and the various environments Yamalube oils are specifically created for to bring optimum performance.     Yamalube is the result of over 60 years of dedicated R&D into how we can make our engines run at their very best. From use in the first Autolube automatic oil injection pump to today’s R-Series of supersport motorcycles, Yamalube oils are precision-blended to be the best match for a Yamaha engine, be it on the road, dirt, water or snow.    #Yamaha #RevsyourHeart #motorcycles #snowmobiles #SxS #ROV #genuine #oil #manufacturing #engineering #history 

IWATA, July 16, 2024 - Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd. (Tokyo: 7272) announces it has signed a service agreement with YL Forest Co., Ltd. (hereinafter, "YLF"), a company headquartered in Fukuoka City that is implementing its proprietary mangrove planting method in the Republic of Indonesia. Going forward, funding provided to YLF by the Company will go toward launching a new mangrove planting project in the country's province of South Sulawesi. The agreement entrusts YLF with silvo-fishery-based mangrove planting work over a three-year period, aimed at contributing to biodiversity, carbon neutrality, and preventing marine pollution. Through YLF's work, Yamaha Motor will plant 215 hectares (approximately 370,000 trees) of mangroves as well as maintain operations in the project area. YLF conducts afforestation work using its own version of silvo-fishery for mangrove planting. Silvo-fishery (a portmanteau of "silviculture" and "fishery") is a method that yields the benefits of both mangrove reforestation and aquaculture regeneration. This combination not only contributes to sustainable forest management but also to improving the livelihoods of local residents through sustainable aquaculture paired with the natural environment. Furthermore, mangrove forests store large amounts of carbon underground, making them an important channel for blue carbon.* One of the four items in the Company's Marine Long-Term Vision is "Towards a future with a greater ocean than the current one of today." As a marine industry leader, Yamaha Motor will continue working to preserve the world's beautiful waters in order to achieve this goal. *Carbon absorbed into coastal and marine ecosystems that accumulates in the biomass and soil below it. #Yamaha #RevsyourHeart #collaboration #environment #preservation #silvofishery #Indonesia #forests #aquaculture #carbon #carbonneutral #bluecarbon

=== Days Gone By===   Days Spent with Cars – 7. A Request from Toyota Motor    Shortly after our previous business partnership ended, President Kawakami began to approach Toyota Motor. The first step was for management of both companies to meet. Vice President Eiji Toyoda (at the time), Managing Executive Officer Shoichiro Toyoda (at the time) and a number of other Toyota executives visited Yamaha and met for discussions with President Kawakami at Seifuso, the company’s private inn for visiting dignitaries. I was also asked to attend and explain the content and details of the car-related work we had done up to that point. I can still clearly remember how nervous I was.    Toyota likely wanted to ascertain whether or not Yamaha could really handle future automobile development work—some of which would involve handling confidential information—and there was also our business partnership history to consider. I have no doubt that Toyota visiting us that day was more of a preliminary investigation into what level of relationship they could have with Yamaha.    Toyota later asked President Kawakami to visit, so he, Managing Executive Officer Naka, Executive Officer Ono and I traveled to Toyota’s headquarters. Vice President Toyoda, Managing Director Saito, Managing Executive Officer Toyoda and Executive Officer Inagawa were waiting for us when we arrived. It was on this occasion that Toyota officially expressed interest in having Yamaha Motor work for them.    <continues>    #Yamaha #RevsyourHeart #cars #automotive #manufacturing #engineering #history 

===What the Japanese Bayberry Trees Have Seen===   21. Business Plans  <continued>    As for sales, we figured that if we could get Nippon Gakki’s branch offices across the country to help, we would be able to somehow reach our initial sales targets. We had to try and finish the first ten prototypes that we were working on by October 5th, and then try to add an additional 20 complete prototypes by mid-November.    During a road test held on September 11th, the No. 2 prototype completed 387 km in a single day, indicating that it would take about 26 days for us to complete the full 10,000 km test.    On the 13th, the president issued some guidelines as to how we would move forward for the foreseeable future, and we were forced to alter the plans we had made at the meeting just a few days ago.    Among his thoughts were:  – I want to make the formal announcement by mid-September.  – There’s no need for the extra prototypes; I want production to start right away.  – October will be for making preparations for production and assembly starting in November.  – I want to start sales on December 1st.    Simply based on his scheduling, we thought most of these goals would be essentially impossible to meet. However, in retrospect, this is what got us fired up, scratching our heads and working together to make it happen. In the end, what we thought was “impossible” became possible. We experienced this pattern many, many times after that day.    Photo: A design blueprint for the YA-1's piston    <ends>    #Yamaha #RevsyourHeart #motorcycles #racing #manufacturing #engineering #history #design

IWATA, July 10, 2024 - Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd. (Tokyo: 7272) is pleased to announce that it will build a new verification testing facility equipped with a melting furnace and heat treatment furnace using hydrogen gas at its Morimachi Factory (Morimachi, Shuchi-gun, Shizuoka Prefecture). From 2025, we will begin development and verification of technologies and techniques for melting aluminum alloy using hydrogen gas, as well as comprehensive verification testing for requisite facilities, equipment, and more. By the end of 2026, we plan to complete the development of technologies for melting aluminum alloy and heat-treating cast parts using hydrogen gas and to gradually implement them at our domestic and international casting factories from 2027 onward. This verification testing is part of Yamaha Motor's efforts to minimize Scope 1*¹ CO₂ emissions across the life cycles of our products. In the manufacture of cast parts for motorcycles, outboard motors, and other products, natural gas and other fossil fuels are currently used to provide the thermal energy required for melting aluminum alloys. In our search for alternative energy sources, we judged that electrification is not suited for the melting process in terms of energy efficiency, as it requires a large amount of heat, so we turned our attention to hydrogen energy, which Yamaha Motor is already studying as an option for reducing Scope 3*² emissions. The verification testing itself will include examining the influence hydrogen gas has on quality and developing temperature control techniques using hydrogen burners. We are also considering the introduction of equipment for producing green hydrogen and methanation equipment*³ (through joint research with Shizuoka University) to produce e-methane without needing external heat sources. Yamaha Motor will work to develop equipment for producing hydrogen gas at low cost as well as technologies for capturing and reusing the CO₂ in exhaust gases. Yamaha Motor, in line with its Yamaha Motor Group Environmental Plan 2050, is working toward being carbon neutral*⁴ throughout all of its supply chains, including the company's business activities by 2050. Furthermore, with Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, we have accelerated our plans to achieve carbon neutrality at our manufacturing sites--including at group companies--by 2035 and are ramping up our efforts to that end. *1 Emissions produced as a direct result of business activities (product manufacturing and fuel combustion) *2 Emissions produced from the Company's value chain, e.g., product use, deliveries, transportation *3 Equipment for producing e-methane by using a catalyst to create a CO₂ and hydrogen reaction *4 Emissions as a direct result of business activities (Scope 1 and 2) and emissions outside of these (Scope 3)

Next in our series of interviews with the Communication Plaza’s restoration team is Ikuo Nakamura, a former road racer and long-time Yamaha test rider. He is a relative newcomer to the team, but brings with him a wealth of wrenching know-how and experience he honed maintaining his racebike back in the day. Still, he finds new lessons hidden in the engineering of the old Yamahas he works hard to restore today.    #Yamaha #RevsyourHeart #classic #motorcycles #restoration #museum #preservation #design #industrialdesign #history #manufacturing #engineering #technology #craftsmanship 

=== Days Gone By===   Days Spent with Cars – 6. A Sports Car Known to Few    While working on these projects, our personal relationships with that carmaker grew closer and more frequent, and as we consistently built more and more parts and prototypes, they began to recognize Yamaha’s technological expertise. Then, it came—a full-on joint development project to create a new sports car from the ground up. We were ecstatic; we had finally returned to building sports cars!    The specifications for the car were as follows:  It would be powered by the 2,000cc, DOHC Yamaha YX-80 engine and use the chassis from an existing sports car, but with the suspension redesigned for improved high-speed driving. The styling would be handled by a designer from Europe working for the carmaker on commission at the time. His avant-garde design included pop-up headlights, a first for a car from Japan.    While the carmaker handled the overall layout, Yamaha worked out the details of the design based on it and built the prototypes. Because the overall layout was well thought out and nearly finalized—and the fact that we used some existing parts—the prototype car was complete only ten months after we began working on the details of the design. This prototype was to be the automaker’s first true sports car and it was scheduled to be unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show. However, issues arose and it was postponed indefinitely, never seeing the eyes of the public.    And so, aside from those of us involved with the project, I doubt many people even knew this sports car ever existed. After less than two years, our business partnership came to an end.    <ends>    #Yamaha #RevsyourHeart #cars #automotive #manufacturing #engineering #history 

===What the Japanese Bayberry Trees Have Seen===   21. Business Plans    On September 10th, Managing Executive Officer Ogura held a no-nonsense meeting with a group of managers to discuss how we would make our motorcycles a viable business. The topics were financing issues, profit planning, our sales structure and more.  The reason I wrote that the meeting was “no-nonsense” was because the company’s financial situation at the time was anything but rosy. In fact, finances were so bleak that the group was forced to consider selling some of the company’s real estate assets to raise the funds needed to start motorcycle production.    At the time, the company had only sufficient assets to produce between 150 and 200 units monthly. At those low production volumes, it was all too clear that not only would the cost of each bike be unfeasibly high, but also every sale would result in a loss of tens of thousands of yen.    The decision had already been made to establish an independent company to produce motorcycles, but how long could Nippon Gakki shoulder the burden of a company constantly in the red? In the end, Nippon Gakki would indeed have to cover the losses, and that raised the next question: How long would it last? It was a conundrum that seemed everlasting.    Photo: Aerial shot of Nippon Gakki’s main factory the following year (1955)    <continues>    #Yamaha #RevsyourHeart #motorcycles #racing #manufacturing #engineering #history #design

The next model feature from the Communication Plaza’s previous Historical Models Demonstration Run is from nearly 60 years ago: the YDS-3C. It was a scrambler model for overseas markets based on the high-performance YDS-3 and drew attention in America's then-emerging off-road bike segment. It featured an Autolube-equipped 2-stroke, in-line 2-cylinder engine with excellent power, reliability and durability.    #Yamaha #RevsyourHeart #classic #historical #cars #supercar #motorcycles #racing #history #manufacturing #engineering #design