“Electricly powered racing motorcycle? Let's not be mistaken! » The assertion is peremptory and comes from a qualified voice: Steve Sargent, Triumph product manager, who declared during an interview with the British site crash.net, that for the moment the technological limits do not allow go far beyond where we are.
The conclusions of the Triumph executive, also in light of the experience acquired while developing the TE-1 project, the Hinckley-based brand's electric motorcycle, are rather drastic: “the performance of an electric motorcycle is impressive in terms of acceleration, but the vehicle remains increasingly heavy because with current technology the batteries are relatively heavy, and the technology currently limits the autonomy. So far we have seen that in MotoE races last between 6 and 8 laps. I don't know what Ducati will come up with, but from what we've discovered of the technology available today, it would be difficult to go much further. »
And in fact, the technical analysis of Steve Sargent is also shared by the men of Borgo Panigale: “For electric motorcycles, the main problem is the weight [of the battery], recognized the general director of Ducati, Claudio Domenicali, after winning the new MotoE supply contract from 2023 to 2026. So we have a program in place to make the bike as light as possible. But since the races are already very short, the same power of the Energica model used so far (110 kW or 150 hp) has been maintained for the Ducati V21L and the torque has been reduced from 220 to 140 Nm. In this way, Ducati engineers have managed to obtain an electric model that weighs 35 kg less than the Energica, but we are still at 225 kg, or 68 kg more than a MotoGP prototype which, moreover, has double the power and can cover triple the running distance.
The comparison of lap times achieved in the Mugello race in 2022 was also merciless, demonstrating that the term of comparison is Moto3 rather than MotoGP: best lap in the premier class 1'46.588, Moto3 came in at 1'57.243 and MotoE at 1.
