The V3R has landed. Or, at least, has almost landed, with Honda gracing this year’s EICMA show — the most important motorcycle exposition in the world — with a fully finished example of its unique vee-three sportbike.

Not only is the new Honda the first V3 four-stroke engine — there have been a few two-stroke triples including Kenny Roberts’ KR3 500-cc racer — but it is the first motorcycle to incorporate an electrically-powered supercharger.

Previously “blown” motorcycles have seen their forced induction come from traditional turbochargers or mechanically driven superchargers. The first relies on the exhaust gases exiting the cylinder to drive a turbine, which in turn spins an impeller that force-feeds intake gas into the cylinder. It’s a wonderfully efficient system that only suffers because there can be a delay between the time the rider calls for more power and when the exhaust gases have increased in sufficient quantity to spin the impeller faster. You know it as turbo lag.

Belt- or chain-driven superchargers, meanwhile, pretty much eliminate turbo lag. Anyone who’s ever driven any form of Kawasaki H2 can attest to their instant throttle response. That said, their mechanical driving system does create some drag, which hurts fuel economy. Worse yet, while turbochargers — because they are driven by exhaust gasses — provide “on-demand” boosts in power, a supercharger is always on. Another inefficiency.

If automotive experience is anything — electrically-driven compressors are pretty common in cars — electric turbochargers eliminate both of those problems. Because the compressor is driven by an electric motor, it responds instantly, eliminating turbo lag. And because it’s driven electrically, it suffers from none of the mechanical inefficiencies of traditional supercharging. 

According to Honda, the V3R boasts the performance of a 1,200-cc motorcycle from a 900. Honda didn’t say which kind of 1,200 — there being a big difference, for instance, between a Kawasaki ZRX1200 and a ZX-12R — but it’s impressive, nonetheless. I suspect that the V3R, because the only weakness of electric compressors is that they can’t spin that fast, will be more ZR than ZX.

But that can be fixed. As much as we’d like to congratulate ourselves on all this high-techery, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that cars, at least Porsches, are way ahead of us. In fact, the legendary German automaker has been peddling a new kind of turbocharger — e-Turbo — that combines a traditional gas-powered turbocharger with an e-compressor’s electric drive.

Here’s the thinking behind driving a turbo both ways. Because there’s no more worry about turbo lag — again, the turbocharger’s electric motor guarantees it can spin up quickly — Porsche found that it could equip its flat-six engine with a larger traditional turbocharger than normally needed to optimize top-end power. In fact, according to Porsche, the turbocharger in its GTS is about the same size as those used on industrial trucks. Normally such a large unit would cause the kind of turbo lag that plagued motorcycling’s first attempt at turbocharging — Honda’s CX500T and Yamaha XJ650 Turbo — but that electric motor eliminates it. It really is the best of all worlds.

But that’s not all! Motorcycling is having a hell of a hard time electrifying. Electric cars may be struggling a little here in North America, but battery-powered motorcycles are dead everywhere and it looks like, barring some true hand-on-heart, there-really-is-a-technological miracle, they’re never going to get off the ground. If motorcycling is to remain modern, we’re going to have to look elsewhere for our electrification bona fides. 

And one of those elsewheres may be hybrids like Kawasaki’s Ninja 7 Hybrid and a few projects Chinese motorcycle manufacturers are reportedly working on. That’s where the innovation of these e-Turbos really kicks in. Like the regenerative engine braking that powers all hybrids, the electric motor that drives the e-Turbo can reverse its polarity and turn into a generator. Yes, I’m saying that the turbocharger can be used to rejuvenate a hybrid system’s battery. In fact, according to Porsche, when the GTS’ turbocharger is in its regenerative mode, it can feed the electric motor directly. 

The Germans call this a T-Hybrid and how it works is truly magical. Essentially, every time the turbocharger is spinning too fast and needs to slow down, the electric motor’s polarity is reversed and the turbo can generate as much as 11-kilowatts — the same as a home EV charger — for regenerative charging. It also means the turbocharger needs no traditional wastegate; if the turbocharger is producing too much boost, it’s that built-in electric motor that slows it down. 

And this is where this innovation gets really interesting. Porsche deliberately made the turbocharger unit too large. So any time the engine is spinning really hard, the turbo is already producing more boost than the engine needs — or is allowed — and so its electric motor is feeding that extra energy back into the hybrid system. 

In other words, rather than having the hybrid battery getting recharged only when you’re slowing down or braking, this system also “regenerates” when you’re on the gas and at full boost. And since it can charge the battery more often, it means a smaller — read: “lighter” — battery can be used which would be a huge boon to any hybrid motorcycle. It would also mean that middleweight hybrids — again, like Kawasaki’s Ninja 7 — could be decidedly more powerful as well as remaining lightweight. 

So, while I congratulate Honda on this new technology, I hope its innovation doesn’t stop with the V3R.