NEWS
Honda and Yamaha Ran Electric Demos After MXEP Stalled
Honda and Yamaha ran EV motocross demos at Ernée after MXEP was postponed, with a clutch-equipped Yamaha still unfinished in its engineer’s head.
Honda and Yamaha ran factory electric motocross bikes on the Motocross of Nations track in Ernée, France, on October 3 and 4, 2026. Both days the laps went at 12:45 local time, with no timing screens and no results. The 79th Nations at Circuit Raymond Demy was still a gasoline race from Friday practice through Sunday’s last moto.
The shared demo filled a hole. MXEP, the electric class those prototypes were built to race, has been postponed with no new date.
Lunchtime Laps on the Raymond Demy Circuit
Infront Moto Racing put the two factories on track together and called the pairing a joint show of their electric work. Honda sent Trey Canard and Justin Brayton out on the CR ELECTRIC PROTO, and Yamaha sent Ben Townley and Milko Potisek out on the YE-01 Racing Concept. Each brand brought two bikes. The Nations crowd is the largest of the MXGP year, and that was the point of the slot.
Canard is a Honda HRC test rider who first raced an electric Honda in Japan in 2023. Brayton spent years in AMA Supercross and now helps test the PROTO in the United States. Townley won the 2004 MX2 world title and the 2007 AMA Supercross 250 East title. Potisek was runner-up in the 2011 MX3 World Championship and has won the Enduropale du Touquet three times. Four known names, zero classified laps.
The promoter posted the pairing before the gate dropped.
Honda and Yamaha will take to the track together for an EV Motocross Demo at the Monster Energy FIM Motocross of Nations in Ernée, France ✨
Honda will bring the CR ELECTRIC PROTO, ridden by Trey Canard and Justin Brayton, Yamaha Motor will display the YE-01 Racing Concept and… pic.twitter.com/2CGEr3Wf9m
— MXGP (@mxgp) September 29, 2026
By the time the weekend closed, the only public proof the laps happened was the riders, the paddock photos, and a later engineer interview. No one published a lap time.
MXEP Was the Point, Then Infront Hit Pause
Yamaha Motor’s Iwata statement on September 25, 2026, framed an exhibition run of its YE-01 Racing Concept as a step toward MXEP, “an electric motocross racing series scheduled to launch in the near future.” That wording is softer than the 2026 target Yamaha still used when the bike appeared at EICMA in 2025.
Infront first mapped MXEP in March 2024 as a support race on Grand Prix weekends, about five or six European rounds, kept separate from the 450 four-strokes. The idea went back further. David Luongo, CEO of Infront Moto Racing, said manufacturers and federations pushed for a plan in 2022, and the company gave them four years to be ready for 2026.
THE MXEP CALENDAR THAT DID NOT OPEN
- 2022: Manufacturers and federations ask Infront for an electric path; a four-year runway is set toward a 2026 support class.
- March 2024: MXEP is described as five or six European rounds on GP weekends, not mixed with ICE motos.
- November 2025: Yamaha shows the YE-01 Racing Concept at EICMA and still talks about a 2026 MXEP entry.
- September 25, 2026: Yamaha’s Nations release calls MXEP a series “scheduled to launch in the near future.”
- October 3-4, 2026: Honda and Yamaha run demo laps at Ernée instead of racing each other.
Luongo later said the factories were not ready and that Infront would keep watching, while putting its weight back on combustion racing. He also pointed at Dorna’s pause of MotoE.
After several meetings and talking during the last years and considering the state of development of this technology for the different manufacturers we decided to postpone the series to an indeterminate date. You can see that Dorna did a similar action the past days with their MotoE series. We will continue to monitor the situation. For now, we are happy with the KTM e-motocross series which allow young kids to have a first step into our sport during 6 Grand Prix, and we will continue to concentrate on the soul of our sport, the ICE engine.
David Luongo, CEO, Infront Moto Racing
Daiki Takehana, Yamaha’s YE-01 project leader, said at Ernée that Yamaha is still the only factory to say in public that it wants a place in MXEP. He also said a head-to-head with gasoline 450s is the wrong test, because the two powertrains do different jobs, and he wants a format that shows what electric does well rather than a copy of an MXGP moto.
Honda’s Title Came From a Different Series
The CR ELECTRIC PROTO did not arrive at Ernée as a show bike. Honda Racing Corporation put it in the All Japan Motocross Championship at Saitama in October 2023, the company’s first official race with an electric motorcycle. Canard took two of three holeshots, finished second in the opening heat, and crashed out of the next two as the ruts grew. HRC then sent the same project into the 2024 FIM E-Xplorer World Cup.
On February 2, 2024, the FIM confirmed that Team HRC will enter the CR ELECTRIC PROTO with Tosha Schareina, a Dakar rider, and Francesca Nocera, an Italian women’s motocross champion. Koji Watanabe, president of Honda Racing Corporation, said the series was a way to harden the tech and the people on it, as Honda pushes motorcycle carbon neutrality in the 2040s.
Schareina closed the season in Switzerland on September 21 and 22, 2024, and Honda named him champion in the men’s category in the factory team’s first year. Nocera finished second in the women’s category. Team HRC finished second in the team category. That title sits in a mixed-gender, mixed-surface cup, not in MXGP, which is why a Nations demo could still look like a first look to a motocross crowd that never watches E-Xplorer.
THE TWO BIKES IN ERNÉE
| Bike | Riders at MXoN | What it is | Race record before Ernée |
|---|---|---|---|
| Honda CR ELECTRIC PROTO | Trey Canard, Justin Brayton | HRC electric motocross prototype | 2023 All Japan debut; 2024 E-Xplorer men’s title |
| Yamaha YE-01 Racing Concept | Ben Townley, Milko Potisek | YZ450F-based concept with Electric Motion power unit | Shown at EICMA 2025; Ernée was the first public track run |
Canard’s own verdict after the Saturday laps was blunt. He wrote that the PROTO was putting down wattage at Ernée, then added, “The CR Electric Proto is unbelievable!”
Putting down some wattage today in Ernée⚡️
The CR Electric Proto is unbelievable! @IconMeats @FLYRacingGlobal @alpinestars pic.twitter.com/pXaHmzIdXp
— Trey Canard (@TreyCanard) October 3, 2026
Why Yamaha Kept a Clutch on the YE-01
Yamaha’s Nations release listed three hardware choices, and the odd one is the clutch. Most electric dirt bikes do without one. The YE-01 uses a mechanical clutch so the rider can meter drive with the left lever, the same habit a 450 rider already has. Takehana’s group also carried a flywheel, a trick Yamaha already used on the TY-E electric trials bike.
YE-01 FEATURES YAMAHA PUT ON THE RECORD
- New frame: A fresh chassis drawn from YZ450F know-how, aimed at the same stable, readable feel as the gasoline bike.
- Joint power unit: A motocross-specific unit developed with Electric Motion, which Yamaha says can reach MXGP-level power, with no horsepower figure published.
- Mechanical clutch: A lever the rider can use to feed drive, hold a slide, or keep the rear tire in the conversation when the motor would otherwise spin it.
The partnership behind that motor is French, which made Ernée a home crowd for the supplier if not for the badge. Yamaha invested in French EV company Electric Motion on November 7, 2024, naming the Saint-Brès firm a strategic partner for competition electrics. Electric Motion has built trials and off-road EVs since 2009. Philippe Aresten is CEO. The company sells under the EM brand in about 40 countries and, in its own note at the time of the stake, employed about 20 people.
Heihiko Miyashiro, who splits time between YZ advanced work and the electric project, said a raw motor is strong and numb at the same time. It will spin the tire the instant grip breaks, with little of the dialogue a four-stroke gives through the crank. The clutch, the flywheel, and the traction software are there to put that dialogue back. Yamaha also fitted power modes and rider aids on the same switchgear a YZ rider already knows, and it used KYB fork and shock hardware shared with the 2026 YZ450F. Battery size, race duration, and wet weight were not published.
The Grandstand Wanted Exhaust Noise
Takehana walked the Ernée paddock and heard the line he expected: no sound, so it is boring. He did not argue that the complaint is fake. He said noise and vibration still move people, and that Yamaha wants to keep some of that feeling even as it builds bikes that do not need a pipe. The YE-01 even carries a painted line, “EV is an addition to, not a replacement for ICE,” which Takehana later called a slightly clumsy way of saying the company is not trying to kill the gasoline YZ.
That coexistence pitch is the honest one, because the Nations itself stayed a four-stroke fight, and the loudest public replies to the demo announcement were people asking for a two-stroke instead. Yamaha printed the disclaimer on the bike because it already knew the argument. Honda did not need a slogan. Its PROTO had already won a cup, then showed up at lunchtime beside a rival that has not raced at all.
Stark Varg has taken electric bikes into World Supercross, and Takehana gets asked why Yamaha will not do the same in supercross or All Japan. His answer is that beating a 450 in its own race is the wrong scoreboard. He wants a separate peak for EV, the way Formula E is not a shadow of F1. Infront’s postponement leaves him without that peak, which is how two factories ended up sharing a 12:45 window at a gasoline event.
A Development Engineer Calls It 20 Percent Done
Miyashiro was asked at Ernée how close the YE-01 is to the bike in his head. His number was not a press-kit completeness score. It was a personal one.
In my mind, we have only gotten about 20 percent of the way toward the image I have. From here I first want to reach the 100 percent I can already picture, but beyond that there is still a lot I cannot yet imagine.
Heihiko Miyashiro, YE-01 development engineer, at Ernée
He wants control that makes a rider feel faster than they are, because the motor can place torque more precisely than a single-cylinder four-stroke if the software and the clutch let it. He also said building the electric bike forces the gasoline group to relearn things it had stopped questioning. Yamaha opened an EV Business Promotion Department in early 2025 to treat that work as a product path, not a side experiment, and it still lists carbon neutrality across its supply chain by 2050 as the long target. The YE-01 is the motocross piece of that, and it is still a concept with no sale date, no price, and no race series on the calendar.
Honda leaves Ernée with the only electric title in this pairing and with Canard still on the test program. Yamaha leaves with track time, a clutch that motocross riders immediately understood, and an engineer who put his own bike at 20 percent. Infront leaves with the ICE schedule intact. MXEP still has no date, and Yamaha is still the only factory that has said out loud that it wants to be on that grid when it exists.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is the FIM E-Xplorer World Cup?
It is a world series for electric off-road motorcycles that began in 2023, with mixed teams of men and women. Rounds use special courses that mix dirt with paved asphalt, then run short heats rather than a 30-minute MXGP moto. Team MIE of Japan won the first season before Honda arrived in year two.
Who Is Electric Motion, Yamaha’s YE-01 Partner?
Electric Motion SAS is a French maker of electric trials and off-road bikes, founded in 2009 and based in Saint-Brès. Philippe Aresten is founder and CEO. The firm’s EM-branded bikes are sold in about 40 countries, and its machines have scored in the Trial World Championship and in E-Xplorer, which is why Yamaha bought a stake instead of starting the power unit from zero.
Is the Yamaha YE-01 Going on Sale?
Yamaha has not announced a production bike, a price, a battery capacity, or how long the YE-01 can run at race pace. The company also has not said the concept will be sold in Japan. For now the stated job is development toward MXEP, not a showroom.
Has Yamaha Raced an Electric Off-Road Bike Before the YE-01?
Yes, in trials. The TY-E electric trials bike uses a clutch, which is one reason the YE-01 has one. Kenichi Kuroyama won the top class of the All Japan Trial Championship in 2025 on a TY-E, the first electric bike to take that title, and Miyashiro cited that work when he explained the motocross clutch.
