Saturday 13 May 2023 will be remembered as an historical date in the Ducati books. It was held the first race in our history by a Ducati 100% electric.

Claudio Domenicali, Ducati’s CEO: “Compliments to Jordi Torres that won this race, and to all the Ducati and Ducati Corse engineers that pushed to the limit the technology. The best lap time is more than 3 seconds faster than the best ever lap time for an electric bike in Le Mans circuit.

The MotoE project is part of Ducati R&D effort to reduce the company’s CO2 footprint: we want to study what will be the best technology for high performance motorcycles. Many engineers were present and the project was executed in a very intense way. We really wanted to develop the best possible electric motorcycle, with no compromises on performance.

With currently available Lithium batteries the energy density is, when also power density is a requirement, below 250 Wh/kg and this strongly limits range when weight is an issue, like sports bikes. Ducati MotoE weighs only 225 kg but race distance has to be limited to 7/8 laps, depending on the circuit.

But we are already looking at new cells where Energy density raise up to above 350 Wh/Kg (still at proto stage) and an announcement has been made recently of cells of 500 Wh/kg. When these cells will be available for production, the global performance (power, range, weight) of electrical bikes will be much closer to ICEs than now.

Of course, to be really carbon neutral electrical vehicles would need to be recharged with 100% renewable energy.

We are developing as well ICE engines based on non-fossil fuels, both biofuels and efuels. The MotoGP championship will run from next year on 40% of non-fossil fuel and 100% from 2027. Therefore MotoGP will be zero carbon emissions from 2027 (when also the production of the fuel is counted as should logically be). And potentially also Hydrogen has a lot to say.

Transforming renewable energy into efuels and Hydrogen is less efficient than using it directly into electrical vehicles but it represents currently a very effective way to transport energy generated in areas far from Europe or US, like Africa or Australia, where there is an enormous potential to generate renewable energy. So we should look at efuels and hydrogen as energy carriers.

So… busy period for engineers, therefore I am so proud to be in condition to guide our beloved Ducati into the future in such an intense moment…”