Kawasaki is testing a hybrid motorcycle with a six-speed manual transmission

Kawasaki hinted its future range of motorcycles will include a hybrid model. It's busily developing one of the industry's first gasoline-electric two-wheelers, and it released a video to explain how the technology works.

Pay no attention to the sci-fi three-wheeler leaning into a turn at the beginning of the film; the hybrid bike won't look anything like it, for better or worse. We haven't seen its full design yet, but the firm explained it's being developed to switch among gasoline, electric and hybrid power. It relies on an armada of sensors to identify the type of road it's traveling on and adjust its powertrain accordingly. For example, the software charges the battery pack while the bike is traveling on the highway, shuts off the gasoline engine when it rides through a city core, and leverages both power sources on a twisty road. Hybrid cars have been doing this for years.

However, building a hybrid car is relatively simple, because there's usually plenty of space in which to package the different components, but making a hybrid motorcycle is far more complicated. We're still waiting to find out how Kawasaki plans to carve out space for a motor, a battery pack, and an engine (likely one from its parts bin) in a relatively small footprint, and how it will offset the weight added by the hybrid system's components.