Ducati has confirmed that the brand’s first foray into the world of electric motorcycles will come by way of the racetrack and the MotoE series.
Starting from the 2023 season, Ducati will take over from Energica sole official supplier of motorcycles for the FIM Enel MotoE World Cup. As Formula E is to F1 racing, the MotoE World Cup will fill the same role for motorcycles as the premier electric class of the MotoGP World Championship.
The agreement signed with the organiser and promoter of the championships, Dorna Sports, lasts until 2026 and will see the electric Ducati’s duke it out over at least four seasons of the MotoE World Cup. The current platform, the Energica Ego Corsa, has been used by the series since its inception in 2019.
"We are proud of this agreement because, like all the first times, it represents a historic moment for our company,” says Ducati CEO Claudio Domenicali.
“Ducati is always projected towards the future and every time it enters a new world, it does so to create the best performing product possible. This agreement comes at the right time for Ducati, which has been studying the situation of electric powertrains for years, because it will allow us to experiment in a well-known and controlled field like that of racing competition. We will work to make available to all participants of the FIM Enel MotoE World Cup electric bikes that are high-performance and characterized by lightness.”
While specific details on what the new electric Ducati platform will look like, the firm has just over a year to clear the hurdles of bringing the electric racer into production, with weight reduction already singled out as the biggest challenge facing the bike’s development.
“It is precisely on weight, a fundamental element of sports bikes, that the greatest challenge will be played out, Domenicali said.
“Lightness has always been in Ducati’s DNA and thanks to the technology and chemistry of the batteries that are evolving rapidly we are convinced that we can obtain an excellent result. We test our innovations and our futuristic technological solutions on circuits all over the world and then make exciting and desirable products available to Ducatisti. I am convinced that once again we will build on the experiences we have had in the world of racing competition to transfer them and apply them also on production bikes."
Ducati is yet to announce a timeline on when we can expect to see the firm’s first road-legal production model, but in true Ducati fashion, we expect that form will follow function in the most elegant way possible.
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