#Tnr

Yamaha Motor Europe announced updates to the Ténéré 700, giving the middleweight ADV bike a TFT display, smartphone connectivity, a new ABS mode and other small updates. As of this writing, the 2023 Ténéré 700 has not been announced for the U.S., though we expect to receive official news soon. The Ténéré 700 Rally Edition variant offered in Europe (pictured below with the Heritage White livery) also received the same updates, but we don’t expect that it will be offered on these shores.

Yamaha has filed designs that reveal what the production version of the Ténéré 700 Raid will look like. The Ténéré 700 Raid was shown at EICMA in prototype form as an even more off-road capable version of the Ténéré 700. While the prototype was essentially a Ténéré 700 modified with Genuine Yamaha Technology Racing (GYTR) performance parts, the designed filed with the European Union Intellectual Property Office appears ready for series production.

Good news: after giving us looks at a concept and a prototype, plus a prolonged promotional campaign, Yamaha officially introduced the production version of the Ténéré 700.

This week you might notice Motorcycle.com being a little quieter than usual. The reason is because most of the MO staff are out riding in our Sorta Annual Big Adventure Bike Shootout. For 2018, we’ve gathered seven of the biggest and baddest adventure machines out there. The plan? To put them through their paces on both the pavement and the dirt. To prove we’re serious about the dirt part, each of the contenders here comes to us with wire wheels, except for one, which we’ll get to in a moment.

Those of you who were intrigued by the Yamaha T7 Concept shown at last year’s EICMA show will be happy to hear that- wait, what? Oh, sorry. Make that disappointed to hear that the 689cc Twin adventure rally bike is still not ready for production, instead appearing at this year’s EICMA show as a prototype.

Last week, Yamaha released a video teasing a new product launch for Sept. 6, with the tantalizing title “Your Adventure Awaits.” Naturally, this led to assumptions it’s for the launch of the production version of the T7 concept Yamaha presented at EICMA.

At EICMA 2016, Yamaha unveiled the T7 concept; a prototype for a future adventure model we believe will slot beneath the Super Ténéré. Inspired by the XT600Z Ténéré, launched 33 years ago at the Paris Show, the T7 concept looks to draw on many of the attributes that helped Yamaha sell over 61,000 units of the XT600Z between 1984 and 1994 – mainly its simplicity and race-bred pedigree.

What we’re seeing here is a middleweight Ténéré based on the FZ-07 parallel-Twin engine. The obvious giveaway being the sexy little S-bend of the header pipes betraying its family origins, here shielded by an aluminum bash plate. Launching a mid-size ADV bike fills a hole in Yamaha’s current model lineup and should offer stout competition for the likes of Suzuki’s V-Strom 650XT, Triumph’s Tiger 800s and BMW’s F800GS.