Yeah, after a lot of thought, I think (hold onto your jockstraps folks, this is going to be a surprise.....) Kawasaki should either just eliminate KiPass or make it optional. There, I said it. While I am a big fan, there is some kind of resistance to the system in the US; Yamaha realized this because they have a similar system on the FJR but NOT those sold in the US. For whatever reason, we seem a bit backward and sort of superstitious regarding 'new' technologies. I am old enough to very well remember all the hate aimed at electronic ignition as well as fuel injection, and I firmly believe that a large percentage of the driving public still would rather have a distributor and carburation regardless of the fact that both of those systems have been very well proven to be inferior in every way that I know of. KiPass seems to make a lot of people act like cavemen seeing lightening and thereafter fearing they may anger the gods and get more lightening. Look at the frankly amazing superstition surrounding just removing the stove knob key- honestly, it makes me think of native Pacific Islanders afraid of angering the god of the volcano. :-) But in the end, this is the very public that Kawasaki needs to sell to so given a choice between trying to force them to be rational or simply giving them the 'good juju' that they want, it is just going to be better to give them the 'juju'. Hell, might as well offer a special invocation of the 'longevity ceremony' once a week for the same price as the extended warranty and I betcha' they sell a bunch of slots to that.
Seriously, a larger fuel tank, a good ole' fashioned key (or just bare wires we can twist together- either way), and update to the larger ZX engine and the bike would probably gain a lot of traction in the sport- tourer market. That still leaves the huge question as to whether or not that market, all of it, is large enough to support any significant amount of design and production effort. If Kawasaki claims they are selling 1,000 units a year now, what is the entire sport tourer sales number, which is all they could possibly get? If it is only 5,000 or 10,000 units a year, and no single manufacturer will ever get all of any market, then it may not be worthwhile at all. Look at BMW: they dropped the direct competitor to the C-14 and the FJR, the K1300GT, which I thought was a great bike and while it did have a few problem areas, proper support and a little re- design could have fixed them. But BMW choose to simply drop the line, which kind of indicates to me that maybe the entire sport touring market is not that large and so not worth a big (read: expensive) effort to capture a larger slide of it. ??
Brian
Agreed, the smaller fuel tank did not help. Nor did the characteristics of the earlier linked brakes, and perhaps KiPass. All to arguable degrees of significance. I owned a 2015 FJR1300A briefly. It was a steal at $9500 brand new, so I bought it to keep as a second bike. I loved having the CC, but I like the C14 better in most regards excluding the smaller tank and KiPass. The linked brakes on my 17 C14 are much improved from my 2013 C14.
Having such a fondness for a bike that does not receive the attention to further development and refinement from the mother ship s a bit disappointing. Still a great bike, but Kawasaki could have easily done more to steal sales away from the FJR IMO.