The video above is of Yamaha's very unusual Tesseract concept bike. The Tesseract has four wheels but the appearance is much more like a bullet bike than a traditional four-wheeler. The Tesseract is powered by a liquid cooled, V-twin, 2-cylinder gasoline engine and an electric motor. The clip above not enough for ya? Look below the fold for two more videos of the Tesseract.

The first is from CNET, which questions just who might want a leaning, four-wheeled bike? The second video is a look at lots of the bikes at the Tokyo Motor Show including smaller electric scooters, which is the usual type of electric bike you see. The Tesseract and Crosscage concept are slowly changing our images of electric bikes.

[Source: YouTube]

This mind and law-bending concept from Yamaha would likely cause the Piaggio MP3 to run away and hide in a corner somewhere. The Yamaha Tesseract does the MP3 one-better by adding a fourth wheel to the rear of the cycle, making it difficult to actually classify this concept vehicle. We'll go with motorcycle for now, but reserve the right to change our minds whenever the heck we feel like it. This vehicle inspires us to do so.

The Tesseract has the ability to lean into turns like both the MP3 scooter and a standard motorcycle, and we are betting that it would be absolutely awesome to ride! The cycle is a hybrid, featuring both a V-Twin gas engine and an electric motor. Yamaha calls the front suspension a "dual-scythe" which sounds a little painful. Like the MP3, the machine can be locked upright when coming to a stop and when parking.

Styling is sharp-edged, and the front end takes on a bit of a praying mantis look with the lights and linkages for the dual-scythe suspension system. Supposedly only about as wide as a regular motorcycle, we wish that regulations did not prohibit a machine like this from being street-legal in the States. Oh well, it's just a concept anyway... but we can still dream, can't we?

Related:

• Tokyo 2007 Preview: Yamaha on two-wheels - LUXAIR - Part 1 of 6

[Source: Yamaha Motors]