Special Edition Yamaha YZF-R15 v3.0 Spotted In Indonesia

The Midnight Edition is something we wish would come to India

Yamaha has been selling the YZF-R15 v3.0 in Indonesia for a while now. It is quite the popular model there. So much so that a particular dealer is offering a special Midnight Edition of the bike. It is a cosmetic enhancement where the bike gets a black paint job with gold and silver stripes and gold-painted wheels. 

The third generation YZF-R15 is styled more like a mini R6, featuring an intake between the LED headlamps and a floating tail section ending with an LED tail lamp. The instrument cluster is a fully digital unit now. Major updates come in the form of a larger front disc, front upside-down forks and aluminium rear swingarm. The 155cc liquid-cooled and fuel-injected single gets variable valve timing that bumps up power to 19.3PS at a lofty 10,000rpm and 14.7Nm of torque at 8500rpm. All that power is transmitted to the rear wheel via a slipper clutch. 

Now, the bike costs Rs 1.71 lakh on road in Indonesia. Yamaha does plan to get the bike in India by late 2017 or early 2018. The question that remains is if they will launch the bike with all the bells and whistles that would keep the price around the Rs 1.71 lakh mark. Alternatively, Yamaha could give the upside-down forks and LED headlamps a miss and try to get the price down to Rs 1.5 lakh. 

In other news, Yamaha India’s Chennai manufacturing facility has crossed the one million units sales mark this month.  The Chennai facility commenced operations in March 2015 with a capacity of 4.5 lakh units per month, which increased over the past two years and now stands at 6 lakh units. Yamaha plans to push production capacity of this plant to 9 lakh units by the end of 2019.