Ducati unveils new electric scooter, claims it can make electric motorcycles

Ducati has unveiled another electric scooter, the PRO-III, but its specs fall far short of the electric motorcycles the company claims it can build.

The Ducati PRO-III electric scooter is the company’s latest entry in a long line of micromobility products.

But like Ducati’s e-bikes and other scooters, it’s largely built by other companies that license the Ducati brand.

Ducati claims its new € 799 PRO-III electric scooter is the most advanced yet, as the company explains:

PRO-III is the most technically advanced scooter in the Ducati Urban e-mobility range, thanks to the connection to the Ducati Urban e-Mobility user application and the use of innovative NFC technology. The e-scooter is equipped with a token that allows the scooter to be started simply by bringing it closer to the screen, allowing the use of the vehicle only to the owner in possession of the chip.

This NFC chip and the handlebar-mounted USB charging port for phones and other devices seem to be the only two major advancements over the electric scooters available 3-4 years ago. The rest of the specs are largely equivalent to technology that is several years old.

The scooter reaches a top speed of 15.5 mph (25 km / h), houses a 350 W motor and includes a battery with a capacity of 468 Wh.

Ducati claims that’s enough battery for 31 miles (50 km) of range.

The unveiling of the new scooter contrasts sharply with another recent announcement from Ducati: it will be the sole supplier of electric racing motorcycles for the MotoE racing series from 2023.

The news raised eyebrows due to the fact that Ducati doesn’t make electric motorcycles and the company didn’t seem particularly keen on the idea.

The announcement came just days after Italian motorcycle maker Energica announced that 2022 would be the last year 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. This development cycle will surely be helped by the fact that Ducati engineers are now studying Energica motorcycles, as Livia Cevolini, CEO of Energica confirmed:

It’s good that they go their own way, although I know they have our bikes in their factory that they are studying.

Ducati has had a recurring relationship with the idea of ​​producing electric motorcycles in recent years.

In 2019, Ducati CEO Claudio Domenicali made waves when he said “the future is electric” and indicated that Ducati was working on a production electric motorcycle that would be released relatively soon.

However, the company then backtracked on those claims and threw cold water on the very idea of ​​Ducati producing electric motorcycles.

At the time, Francesca Milicia, Ducati’s vice president of global sales and board member, explained that electric motorcycles were not in the company’s plans:

Will we be producing an electric Ducati soon? No. We believe that for the type of machine we are currently producing, an electric motorcycle cannot guarantee the fun, range, 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 a lesson, another corporate flip-flop would come as no surprise.

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