Here’s Yamaha’s production plans for its mass-production TWO WHEEL drive bike. Conventional motor at the back, electric motor at the front.

The patents on the designs have just been granted and by registering them Yamaha has given away one of the bikes that is likely to make up part of a future range.

There’s no indication of when this motorcycle will see the light of day (to be fair, the designs themselves have been registered to show the routing of the power cable that will supply the front wheel, hub-mounted engine) but the words of the patents do stress that this design is to work alongside a conventionally-driven rear end.

The bike in the main image does look as though it’s battery powered though. Which doesn’t tally with the registration’s description of how the front wheel engine will work on the bike. We have no idea why the two don’t work on the same outline plan (it is usual for both image and description to express the same plan), but in this case they don’t appear to.