The collaboration between Yamaha and River follows the former’s USD 40 million Series B investment in the latter in 2024.
Given that all of its rivals were jumping on the electric mobility bandwagon, Yamaha’s decision to follow suit seemed inevitable. Additionally, it may occur sooner rather than later. According to a recent report, Yamaha Motor Company has partnered with River, an EV startup based in Bengaluru, to develop and manufacture the company’s first electric scooter worldwide.
This will signal a significant change in Yamaha’s product strategy in addition to the company’s entry into the mass-market electric two-wheeler industry. This Yamaha electric scooter, code-named RY01, will be modelled after the River Indie and is anticipated to share the same battery management system (BMS) and motor.
Yamaha electric scooter: What to expect?
Yamaha plans to introduce the battery-powered scooter to the market by the end of this year, and production is anticipated to start sometime between July and September 2025. Together with River in Bengaluru, Yamaha’s international engineering teams in Japan, the US, and Europe are now working on the scooter.
River has been granted complete control over the project’s implementation, including engineering, R&D, powertrain, battery integration, and manufacture, even though Yamaha still retains ownership. But even though Yamaha has one of the largest R&D teams in the world, why did they choose to construct an electric scooter using an already-existing platform?
Yamaha will profit from building the battery-powered scooter on an existing platform in a number of ways, chief among them being cost. The project will be less costly for Yamaha because India is a market that is largely focused on affordability, which ought to be apparent on the product’s price tag. Second, the majority of the e-scooters that Yamaha has introduced in Europe and other nations are low-speed models that are not profitable in India. The fundamental DNA of the company will be more in line with a performance-driven strategy.
According to the report, the Yamaha electric scooter would have a unique design language that better fits Yamaha’s athletic personality, even if it is expected to have the same core platform, motor, and BMS as the River Indie. River will construct the RY01 in India and export it throughout the world.
As previously stated, the top hat will be extremely different from the River India, therefore it is currently very hard to forecast how the upcoming e-scooters would look. It will, however, probably have the same specs as the Indie, which has a 4 kWh battery that promises 161 km of range on a single charge (IDC certified). The 6.7 kW (about 9 horsepower) PMSM electric motor is powered by this battery. We anticipate that this scooter would cost more than Rs 1 lakh (ex-showroom) yet still be reasonably priced.