i talked to one of my guys who was out in the UAE testing in the desert recently for mag shoots. he said everyone over there was pretty disappointed as the machine was fun and fast, but did not have the power to upshift and pull the next gear up the dunes. he said if you upshift in the sand out there, it put you so far below the powerband that you did not have the power to keep accelerating up any dune.
and i dont know if you saw the dyno sheet from Alba posted over the weekend, but a whopping 83whp. which on the same dyno an XP1000 shows 80whp. so, after calculations thats like 33% loss thru the drivetrain. i dont exactly think thats what everyone was expecting since yamahas video says "less loss thru drivetrain than CVT" a polaris is the most power robbing CVT/trans on the market with it typically taking 28-30% of advertised crank hp and robbing it before it gets to the wheels. can-am typically has a little less drivetrain loss with somewhere in the 22-26% as all of our dyno tests have shown. if this yammie loses 30+% then...... umm...... yeah....... i hope its light on the scales to at least make it feel fast.maybe thats why you havent seen any drag race vids. they obviously arent trying to make it appear as if its gonna be the drag racer of the bunch. its just supposed to be different. with a shifter. and new suspension. its new. its different. and back in 2011 when yamaha was probably first testing this thing, 110hp would have been a game changer and blew the market to pieces. but in the last year the market went from 100hp to 144hp. so the new yammie with 112 isnt at the lead of the pack. and with the 30% power it loses thru the drivetrain to get the power to the rear wheels, its not gonna be much faster if any faster than an XP900 in the sand.