I'm trying to sort out the electronics all the new bikes have. There's no simple comparison grid, for starters they'd have to call the same things the same words.
Having purchased three brand-new electronics-laden bikes in the last three years I'll offer some advice:
First of all, it's all about the
bike not the electronics. Most fancy electronic rider aides spend the majority of their time doing absolutely nothing so it's important that you buy a bike which is, first and foremost, a good bike. A crappy bike with a ton of electronic rider aides is still likely to be a crappy bike.
The second thing to do is decide how much customizability you want. Broadly speaking, manufacturers seem to fall into two camps: those who allow you to tweak everything (ex: Ducati) and those that allow you to choose preset "modes" that can't be customized (ex: BMW). Personally, I'm not a big of systems that can't be tweaked. On my KTM Super Duke, for example, the ABS and wheelie control settings work best in "Sport" mode but annoyingly that mode also forces you to deal with an overly-sensitive throttle. I'd be much happier with the bike if I could combine the slightly softer throttle response of "Street" mode with the ABS and wheelie control settings from "Sport" mode.
Don't spend much time focusing on features that have become commonplace. Any bike that has an electronics package is going to have throttle-by-wire, some form of ABS, some form of traction control, and some kind of rider/engine mode. All of these systems are well-understood at this point, almost everybody is using Bosch to implement them (albeit with slightly different calibrations) and they're not worth worrying about, in my opinion,
unless you're looking for race-winning performance on the track. Things are more interesting when you're talking about features near the edge of the envelope. Stuff like engine-braking control, wheelie/stoppie control, slide control, quick downshifts, electronic suspension, etc. are less common than ABS/TC/engine modes. If any of these are important to you, they're a good way to quickly narrow your search.
Rather than focusing on what each manufacturer calls something, it's probably more important to know how it works. Almost nobody on BARF seems to understand how ABS and TC work, which means they also don't understand the fundamental limitations of those systems.
Hint: the one-size-fits-all electronics you get on a street bike have
nothing in common with the stuff installed on a MotoGP bike and custom-tuned by a team of electronics experts for each individual corner on every MotoGP track. That said, here are some common terms you'll see when reading about electronic rider aides. You'll have to read the various manufacturer's marketing blurbs to find out what each individual company calls this stuff, but that's pretty easy to figure out:
Traction Control
Wheelie Control
ABS
Cornering ABS
Engine-Braking Control
Slide Control
Rider Modes/Engine Modes
Rear-wheel Anti-Lift Control (a.k.a. stoppie control)
Quick Upshift
Quick Downshift (a.k.a. auto-blip downshift)
Electronic Suspension (and there are several different variations here)
Electronic steering damper
Cornering lights
You might also want to consider the presence of electronic keys and electronic steering locks.
Then within the domain of, say, traction control, the details. Inertial whatever, 6 axes, is it throttle by wire, etc.
If these details are important for your riding, I'm sure you Crew Chief and electronics techs will be discussing them during your next pre-test meeting
