Yamaha RW700 Explore and RW350: the adventure scooter is finally real
Motorcycle News ·
For years the “adventure scooter” has been a styling exercise: a bit of knobbly-look rubber, a beak, maybe a tall screen, and not much else. Yamaha has just called time on that. The new RW Series — the RW700 Explore and the RW350 — are scooters built to leave the bitumen on purpose, and Yamaha Motor Australia has confirmed both are coming here.
Yamaha’s own pitch is that it’s bridging two worlds: the MAX scooter line that owns the city, and the Ténéré 700 that owns the fire trail. Read the spec sheets and that isn’t just marketing puff. This is the most serious attempt at a dirt-capable scooter any of the big four has made.
RW700 Explore: a Ténéré heart in a step-through body
Start with the engine, because that’s the headline. The RW700 Explore runs Yamaha’s 690cc CP2 parallel twin — the same torquey, much-loved motor in the MT-07, Tracer 7 and Ténéré 700. Yamaha hasn’t published power figures yet, but anyone who has ridden a CP2 knows the character: fat midrange, a lovely crossplane-style thrum, and a motor that rewards you for winding it on out of every corner.
What it doesn’t have is a CVT. Instead it gets Y-AMT, Yamaha’s automated manual gearbox, reworked specifically for this bike. No clutch lever, no gear pedal — you either let it shift itself, or flick through the gears with a see-saw switch on the left bar. That makes the RW700 the first Yamaha scooter with real gears, and the first time Y-AMT has been set up for off-road use. Yamaha says it has smoothed the shifts with a rubber clutch damper and revised shift-rod springs, and reshaped the switch so it plays nicely with the left-hand rear brake lever.
The clever bit is what Yamaha calls Gravel Shift. In auto mode on dirt, the gearbox holds off on upshifts while you’re feeding in throttle or while the rear is sliding, so you can meter out wheelspin instead of having the box grab a taller gear mid-drift. When it senses a locked rear or hard braking it backs off the clutch to stop you stalling — handy when the back wheel spins up on a log or a wet root.
Proper electronics, proper suspension
Under the skin is a six-axis IMU feeding cornering traction control, slide control, cornering brake control and a back-slip regulator. Yamaha Ride Control splits the modes into two families: ROAD (Sport, Street and Eco) and GRAVEL (Explore and Explore+, the latter fully customisable). Rear ABS can be switched off, but only in Gravel — sensible.
The chassis is a high-tensile steel backbone frame with a 41mm upside-down fork giving 160mm of travel up front, and a bottom-link monoshock with 155mm at the back. The Explore spec — the only RW700 Australia gets — adds 15mm of preload and 11-step rebound adjustment on the fork, and the shock has preload and rebound adjustment too. Ground clearance is 170mm.
Wheels are the real tell. These are aluminium rims laced with stainless cross spokes — a first for Yamaha — running tubeless Pirelli Scorpion Rally STRs in a 17-inch front and 15-inch rear. That’s small by adventure-bike standards, but massive for a scooter, and the Rally STR is a proper 50/50 tyre. Brakes are twin 298mm floating discs with radial four-piston calipers up front, and a 267mm disc out back.
Built to stand up on
This is where the RW700 stops looking like a scooter and starts acting like an adventure bike. Instead of a flat floorboard you get proper footpegs with four-position adjustment and removable rubbers, so you can stand up on the dirt with something to grip. For the commute there are fold-out forward footrests for that classic feet-out scooter slouch. The seat is shaped to slide around on, the front is narrowed so you can dab a foot, and the knee area is sculpted to grip when you’re up on the pegs.
Seat height is a friendly 810mm and it weighs 221kg wet. That’s no lightweight — it’s heavier than a Ténéré 700 — but the weight sits low and the step-through layout will make it far less intimidating to paddle around a dead-end track than a tall ADV bike.
It’s also loaded. Heated grips and a heated seat (ten settings each), cruise control, a speed limiter, backlit switches, smart key, a centre stand, knuckle guards, an aluminium bash plate, a 5-inch TFT with Garmin navigation via the free StreetCross app, USB-C, and a lit under-seat bay big enough for a full-face helmet. The tank holds 14 litres. Colours are Forest Green, Sage Blue and Midnight Black.
RW350: the one most people will buy
The RW700 gets the headlines, but the RW350 might be the bigger deal. It runs an all-new 330cc liquid-cooled single with a CVT, but the layout is new too. Yamaha calls it Yamaha Dynamic Ride: instead of the whole engine swinging up and down with the rear wheel like a traditional scooter, the engine is bolted to the frame and only the CVT casing pivots around the crank. Less unsprung weight, a stiffer chassis and more freedom in shock placement — all things you want on a broken surface.
Up front is a 37mm upside-down fork with 140mm of travel, with twin rear shocks giving 105mm and seven-step preload. It rolls on a 16-inch front and 14-inch rear, wearing Dunlop D615 block-tread tyres developed for this model, and the cast rear wheel has a damper in the hub to smooth out drivetrain shunt. Ground clearance is a generous 185mm.
It gets a ride-by-wire throttle (a first in this class for Yamaha), three ride modes — Street, Eco and Explore, which lets the rear step out a bit — traction control, cruise control, smart key, a 5-inch TFT with Garmin navigation, wide pegs with removable rubbers, fold-out footrests, a bash plate and helmet-sized under-seat storage. Colours are Sage Blue, Arashi Sand, Extreme Yellow and Midnight Black.
Key specs at a glance
- RW700 Explore: 690cc CP2 parallel twin · Y-AMT clutchless gearbox · 6-axis IMU · 160/155mm travel · 17/15-inch spoked tubeless wheels · 810mm seat · 170mm clearance · 221kg wet · 14L tank
- RW350: all-new 330cc single · CVT with Yamaha Dynamic Ride layout · 140/105mm travel · 16/14-inch cast wheels · Dunlop D615 tyres · 185mm clearance
- Australian pricing and arrival: to be confirmed by Yamaha Motor Australia
The RiderMates take
Scooters have been pretending to be adventurous for a decade. The RW Series is the first time a major manufacturer has actually done the engineering: pegs you can stand on, travel that means something, spoked tubeless wheels, a gravel mode with a gearbox that understands wheelspin, and a proper bash plate. Yamaha is even claiming it has created a new segment, and it’s hard to argue.
For Australian riders, the RW700 Explore makes a lot of sense. Think of the rider who commutes across the city all week and wants to hit graded dirt to a campsite on the weekend, without owning two bikes or wrestling a tall ADV in traffic. With heated everything, cruise, sat-nav and a clutchless twin, it could be the ultimate one-bike garage for a lot of people.
The questions are price and weight. At 221kg with a premium spec list, the RW700 won’t be cheap, and it lands close to Ténéré 700 money in kilos. If Yamaha gets the price right, though, these two could be the most interesting bikes of 2027. The RW350, with that clever engine layout and LAMS-friendly capacity, could be the sleeper hit for new riders.
Yamaha Motor Australia says pricing and arrival dates for both models will be announced later. We’ll bring you the numbers — and a ride review — as soon as we have them.
Source and images: Yamaha Motor Australia.
