Ducati recently introduced another electric scooter model
which it also says is their most technically advanced scooter yet. The new
PRO-III electric scooter has been developed by the licensee and commercial
partner MT Distribution, with the support of the Centro Stile Ducati.
Ducati has unveiled yet another electric scooter, the
PRO-III, but its specs are nowhere near the electric motorcycles that the
company claims it can build.
The Ducati PRO-III electric standing scooter is the
company’s latest entry in a long line of micromobility products.
But like Ducati’s electric bicycles and other scooters, it
is largely built by other companies that license Ducati’s brand name.
Ducati says that its new €799 PRO-III electric scooter is
its most advanced yet, as the company explained:
PRO-III is the most technically advanced scooter in the
Ducati Urban e-mobility line, thanks to the connection to the Ducati Urban
e-Mobility User App and the use of the innovative NFC technology. The e-scooter
is equipped with a token that allows you to start the scooter simply by
bringing it close to the display, allowing the use of the vehicle only to the
owner in possession of the chip.
That NFC chip and the handlebar-mounted USB charging port
for phones and other devices appear to be the only two major advances compared
to electric scooters available 3-4 years ago. The rest of the specs are largely
equivalent to several-year-old tech.
The scooter reaches a top speed of 15.5 mph (25 km/h),
houses a 350W motor and includes a battery pack with 468 Wh of capacity.
Ducati claims that’s enough battery for 31 miles (50 km) of
range.
The new scooter unveiling comes in stark contrast to another
recent announcement from Ducati: It will be the sole supplier of electric
racing motorcycles for the MotoE racing series starting in 2023.
The announcement came just days after fellow Italian motorcycle
manufacturer Energica announced that 2022 would be the last year that its 150+
mph (241+ km/h) electric motorcycles would be used in the racing series.
Ducati now has less than two years to design, develop, and
produce an electric motorcycle. That development cycle will surely be helped by
the fact that Ducati engineers are now studying Energica’s bikes, as confirmed
by Energica CEO Livia Cevolini:
It’s good that they are going their own way, even though I
know they have our bikes in their factory that they are studying.
Ducati has had quite the on-again, off-again relationship
with the idea of electric motorcycle production over the past few years.
In 2019, Ducati CEO Claudio Domenicali made waves when he
declared that “the future is electric,” and indicated that Ducati was working
on a production electric motorcycle that would be premiering relatively soon.
However, the company then backtracked on those statements
and threw cold water on the whole idea of Ducati producing electric
motorcycles.
At the time, Ducati’s VP of global sales and member of the
board Francesca Milicia explained that electric motorcycles weren’t in the
company’s plans:
Will we produce an electric Ducati soon? No. We think that
for the kind of machine we produce now, an electric motorcycle cannot guarantee
the pleasure, the range, the weight, etc., that Ducati riders expect.
Now Ducati seems to be back in the positive column when it comes to electric motorcycles. But if history is any lesson, another about-face from the company wouldn’t come as a surprise.
Further information on all products in the Ducati Urban
e-Mobility range are available on the website ducatiurbanemobility.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment