Ducati Goes Electric

Yep... you read that right – they’ve joined the bandwagon! Following Harley-Davidson’s Electric LiveWire presentation at CES 2019, Ducati have ‘come out of the woodwork’ in a way to tell us all not to forget about them!

The media has been going crazy on this lately, so the team here at We Buy Any Bike have done some digging to join the band wagon!

Ducati – 2 Years Ago

2017 was the first time we heard talk of Ducati going electric by the managing director of Ducati West Europe, Edouard Lotthe. He revealed that the company had been having talks about releasing both an e-motorcycle and an e-scooter, but he also revealed that the earliest possible date we could expect to see a prototype was in 2021.

Ducati – 2 Weekends Ago!

Since 2017, the company have been on a low-down; keeping hush about everything electric until just 2 weekends ago! If you aren’t a Spanish Student, you probably won’t know this one, but at the Aragon FIM Circuit in Spain, there is a bike produced every year. This bike is designed, built and tested by Motostudents, and they hold an event every year. This year, the CEO of Ducati attended. We aren’t sure if Claudio Domenicali attends every year, but this year!

Whilst there, he got talking to a Spanish Student – either, the student has been spilling some beans, or there’s been some eavesdropping – you choose! Domenicali was caught saying:

“The future is electric; we’re not far from starting a series production”.

Claudio Domenicali

Tried and Tested

Ducati is no alien to the electric world – they’ve been making electric bicycles for ages. We wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve been working under the radar with Energica on their electric project – after all, they’re only around the corner! The Ducati HQ is situated in Bologna and Energica HQ is just 45-minutes away in Modena!

Over the years sources have seen Domencali riding a Hypermotard in Thailand with a Zero FX Powertrain. We all know what the Hypermotard, and I can tell you that the new concept for the Ducati Zero, as created by the Milan Polytechnic School of Design – this bike looks completely, and utterly... different! I mean, it’s not awful, I think people might grow to it... let’s just call it futuristic.

The Design

We all see designs of all sorts of things being designed for the future, but if this is released in 2021, who knows – we might have the first futuristic design actually out on the road, in the hands of casual people! Ducati might actually pave the way for the future!

The bike itself is completely different to anything else. From first glance, we can’t see a dashboard, so unless it’s a really smart little thing where you just sit and it takes you wherever you want to go, we don’t know how that would work! This particular model is the only prototype that has been released, so we hope – as everyone else does, that it will come in the classic Ducati Red. As usual, we can see that Ducati has collaborated with Brembo on this model, as always – but that’s about it! There isn’t really much else we can see, but I suppose they’ve got to keep some things a mystery, haven’t they?