CFMoto Will Build A Special Yamaha Motorcycle For The Chinese Market, Not Europe

Production of Yamaha motorcycles. (Doc. Bikers Republic)

JAKARTA - Yamaha announced a strategic manufacturing joint venture with CFMoto in China in September 2023. The announcement sparked speculation that some Yamaha models aimed at the European market might be produced by CFMoto.

Not without reason that speculation was present, considering that CFMoto has collaborated with the Austrian brand, KTM. In particular, CFMoto is responsible for the production of 790 Adventure parallel twins and the KTM Duke in China, quoted from the Bikesrepublic page, Friday, December 15.

To dispel misunderstandings, Japanese Yamaha issued a statement explicitly outlining that the collaboration was focused solely on industrial cooperation for vehicle manufacturing in China, which serves the local market.

This was also confirmed by European Yamaha President Eric de Seynes, who told Motorcycle News (MCN) he said the cooperation was only for China's domestic market.

"The agreement with CFMoto is truly a joint venture to support a very large Chinese market with certain Yamaha models," he stressed.

Seynes discussed the comparison of CFMoto's collaboration with KTM, which is quite different from the partnership with Yamaha. He emphasized that the agreement with CFMoto was not comparable to the level of integration seen in the CFMoto-KTM collaboration.

"It seems very far away from the closeness of CFMoto and KTM, they (CFMoto) have very specific divisional activities, and it looks like they don't even talk much," he continued.

He further assessed that the agreement was opportunistic, driven by the desire to effectively serve the growing Chinese market. He also underlined the scale differences, organizational structure, and communication practices between CFMoto and Yamaha, and emphasized that this collaboration is not meant as a challenge to the position of KTM in the market.