Honda CBR 650 R E-Clutch 2025 — Specifications

Who remembers the days when shifting gears required three coordinated limbs and a fair amount of concentration? Honda, it seems, considers that era to be drawing to a close. With the 2025 CBR 650 R, the Japanese manufacturer is rolling out its E-Clutch system across its mid-displacement sportbike. A bold move, since in France it's impossible to buy the machine without the system. The message is clear: the future of assisted manual transmission runs through this technology, and Honda is betting big on it.

On the styling front, this generation takes a significant leap forward. The lines have been refined and sharpened to the point of blurring the boundary with a genuine supersport. We're a long way from the tame design of the early CBR 650 F models. The taut fairings, the sharp-eyed front end, the compact proportions — everything suggests you're looking at a full-blooded sportbike. Except that beneath this surgically sculpted bodywork, the 649 cc inline four delivers 95 horsepower at 12,000 rpm and 63.7 Nm of torque at 9,500 rpm. Decent, but nothing more. The Hornet 750 offers comparable output in a very different package, and the CBR 600 RR obviously plays in another league with its 120 hp. The positioning remains coherent: the 650 occupies the sweet spot in Honda's sport lineup, right between the CBR 500 R available to A2 license holders and the 600 RR reserved for riders seeking raw thrills.

The real talking point of this motorcycle is, of course, the E-Clutch. The concept centers on a compact unit bolted to the engine casing, housing two servomotors and a gear train. The weight penalty: just two kilograms, for a total wet weight of 211 kg. In practice, the system detects every action on the shift lever and operates the clutch seamlessly. No need to touch the left-hand lever to upshift or downshift. But the traditional mechanical clutch control remains fully functional at all times. The rider can take back manual control whenever desired, or completely deactivate the system through the dashboard display. This philosophy sets the E-Clutch apart from the DCT dual-clutch transmission: here, you retain a true conventional 6-speed gearbox, with the option to forget it's there. For anyone wondering about the price of the Honda CBR 650 R E-Clutch, the answer is €9,949 — a figure that includes the system as standard.

On the dashboard side, Honda has fitted the 5-inch color TFT display already seen on the Hornet 750 and Transalp. Three display themes, smartphone connectivity via the RoadSync app, simplified navigation, call and music management. It all works well, but the absence of riding modes on a motorcycle sold at this price in 2025 remains hard to justify. The competition — the Kawasaki Ninja 650 and Yamaha R7 chief among them — takes different approaches, granted, but the market trend is clearly moving toward more advanced electronic customization.

The chassis is unchanged, retaining its steel diamond frame, 41 mm Showa inverted fork, radially mounted Nissin four-piston calipers biting 310 mm discs. The 120 mm of travel at each end confirms the machine's road-going vocation, even though the clip-on handlebars mounted below the upper triple clamp betray a genuine appetite for cornering. With a seat height of 810 mm and a 15.4-liter fuel tank, the 2024-2025 Honda CBR 650 R E-Clutch caters equally to the daily commuter and the weekend rider looking for fun without the physical demands of a pure sportbike. It doesn't revolutionize the category, but it lays down a technological marker that the rest of Honda's lineup should soon adopt.