When Yamaha Motor published its annual report for the year 2013 last month, motorcycle blogs the world over picked up on a single line which read: "In sports motorcycles, we are working to create new value with EV sports motorcycles, which we aim to launch in two years, with the development of the small, on-road sports PES1, as well as the PED1, which are being developed to expand the scope of electric vehicles to the off-road world." A few days later, the on-line report was changed, replacing the words "in two years" with "in the near future."

Sportingly, the company alerted shareholders to these changes with the note, "there has been a change in the time frame with regard to the launch of EV sports motorcycles" and in so doing, gave notice that electric motorcycling is about to go mainstream.

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