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Yamaha Ténéré 700 Raid Spotted in European Patents

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The Yamaha Ténéré 700 Raid prototype was one of the (few) darling releases from the 2021 EICMA show in Milan, and the up-spec middleweight adventure bike brought more questions than it did answers.

Was Yamaha teasing a new higher price ADV machine for its future lineup? Was it trying to drum up business for its GYTR aftermarket parts catalog? Maybe a combination of the two? It’s hard to say.

So, it is curious that today we see that the Yamaha Ténéré 700 Raid machine getting spotted in European patent documents, by our colleagues at Cycle World. And once again, that creates more questions than it does answers.

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Dirt

Mugen Is Finally Going Racing with its Electric Dirt Bike

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Mugen is set to go racing with its electric dirt bike in the new FIM E-Xplorer World Cup series.

Racing under the M-TEC name in the new series, Mugen is perhaps an electric racing outfit that we had almost forgotten about, as the Japanese tuning house hasn’t been on the track with its Shinden electric superbike since 2019, when the Isle of Man TT canceled its electric race.

While the various iterations of the Mugen Shinden electric superbike have captured the headlines with their non-stop race wins at the TT, it was the company’s intriguing dirt bike concept that stunned on its debut.

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Dirt

Sam Sunderland Wins the 2022 Dakar Rally for GasGas (And KTM)

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Sam Sunderland can call himself a two-time Dakar Rally winner after today’s final stage of the iconic race.

The Brit finished third in Friday’s Stage 12 timed section, which was enough to clear him by almost four-minutes from his next competitor, Pablo Quintanilla.

The day marks a bit of history as well, as Sunderland’s result gives GasGas its first Dakar Rally, though the machine is largely a rebadged KTM 450 Rally motorcycle. For those who are unaware, GasGas became part of KTM’s business group in 2019.

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News

KTM Sold 332,881 Motorcycles in 2021 – Up 23% From Last Year

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The house of brands under KTM’s management had a very, very good year in 2021, with their parent company Pierer Mobility reporting a 23% increase in motorcycle sales over 2020’s dismal figures.

The preliminary report doesn’t break-out sales by each motorcycle brand (KTM, Husqvarna, & GasGas), but it does separate out the firm’s bicycle and e-bike figures, which have been used in the past to buoy the marketing team’s efforts.

As such, we can rest assured that today’s announcement and positive progress is real, and not the spin we were getting in 2020, which saw the Austrian outfit taking a first-time dip in sales results in the past decade.

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News

Ducati Set an All-Time Sales Record in 2021, And More

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Ducati is the first OEM to brag about its 2021 sales results, and it is quite the brag from the Italian brand – with 59,447 units sold last year.

That sum is an all-time record for Ducati Motor Holding, and marks a 12% gain over the total sales from 2019, and a 24% gain over 2020’s results.

Helping take Ducati to that level was double-digit growth in all of the motorcycle-maker’s key markets, including the United States, where sales were up a staggering 33.5%.

That growth was surely fueled by the Ducati Multistrada V4 adventure bike, which accounted for nearly 1 in 5 Ducati’s sold in 2021.

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Dirt

Alpinestars Debuts A Standalone Airbag System for Off-Road Use

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Perhaps the best news from Alpinestars at CES is that the Italian brand is going to make its off-road airbag system available to consumers, later this year.

The news comes as part of Alpinestars’ larger airbag product line announcement, but we figured this news was so important, it deserved its own story.

This is because the Tech-Air OFF-ROAD V2 protection jacket is the first commercially available airbag system designed for off-road motorcyclists, and that makes it a game-changer for those who want the best protection in the dirt.

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Bikes

Updated KTM 390 Adventure Coming to the USA for 2022 – $6,600

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Fans of small-displacement ADV bikes will rejoice to hear that the KTM 390 Adventure is getting some updates for the 2022 model year.

Looking skin-deep, we can see that the 2022 KTM 390 Adventure get a bodywork revision for the new model year, which includes some new graphics and color choices.

However, it is the changes beyond the outer layer that are perhaps the most intriguing, as the Austrian brand has brought some key upgrades and refinements to its base ADV offering.

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Racing

Danilo Petrucci Headed to MotoAmerica for the 2022 Season?

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Much has been said about Danilo Petrucci’s next move after MotoGP, and currently the Italian rider is making headlines in the 2022 Dakar Rally.

Petrucci’s Dakar debut may not being so good, considering his KTM 450 Rally broke down, and he had to be rescued by helicopter (effectively ending his bid for a good result), but there is other news about the former-MotoGP racer.

That is to say, Danilo Petrucci seems set to be MotoAmerica’s next big name, as the Italian confirmed the news while talking to Raquel Jiménez Rodríguez at the Motosan.es website.

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