Ducati will be the official motorcycle supplier for the FIM MotoE World Cup, the all-electric racing class at select rounds of the MotoGP World Championship, alongside Moto2 and Moto3. Ducati’s partnership with MotoE is set to begin from the 2023 racing season and will continue through 2026. The news of Ducati supplying MotoE machines has important implications and will be seen as one of the first step towards developing all-electric production machines from the iconic Italian brand. As with the MotoGP and World SBK projects, MotoE is largely expected to prove to be the perfect laboratory to take technology and innovation from the track to the showroom.
The news comes just after Modena-based Energica announced that it will not renew its contract with Dorna Sports, which expired in 2022, after a four-year partnership. Energica is one of the few manufacturers of high-performance electric motorcycles, and the Energica Ego Corsa racebike used by all MotoE race teams is based directly on its street-legal electric superbike, the Energica Ego.
Ducati Motor Holding CEO Claudio Domenicali and Dorna Sports CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta announced the partnership at a press conference held at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli. The MotoE World Cup came into existence in 2019 as part of MotoGP promoter Dorna Sports and the FIM’s push for greener motorcycle racing.
“We are very proud of this agreement because, like every first, it represents a historic moment for our company. Ducati is always focused towards the future and every time it enters a new world it does so aiming to create the best-performing product possible. This agreement comes at the right time for Ducati, which has been studying electric powertrains for years, as it will allow us to develop within a controlled field: that of competition. We will work to give every participant in the FIM MotoE World Cup a high-performance, electric motorcycle and one made to exemplify being lightweight. It’s in the area of weight, which is a fundamental element of sports bikes, which will prove the greatest challenge. Lightweight machinery has always been in Ducati’s DNA and thanks to the technology and chemistry of the batteries that are evolving quickly, we are sure that we can achieve excellent results.
“We test our innovations and future-focused technological solutions on circuits all over the world and then create exciting and desirable products for Ducatisti. I am convinced that, once again, we will treasure the experience we gain in the world of competition in order to transfer and apply it to production motorcycles,” said Claudio Domenicali, CEO, Ducati Motor Holding.
According to Ducati, the new MotoE machine will be purpose built from the principles of Ducati’s racing DNA, with focus on creating a lightweight motorcycle “that unites tradition, passion and innovation for a new era of electric competition in the MotoGP paddock.”