I see announcements once in a while well-nigh some new EV thing, and when I google it, every EV news outlet just has a copy/paste of the same info over and over. I think this particular motorcycle is very newsworthy, and I decided to see if I could find out some of the details, and here is what I found…

_________________________________________________

A review of Ducati history

The Italian visitor Ducati is famous for two things. Winning races with wide tech, and…not making a profit selling road bikes to the public. So, lets start at the beginning.

They are based in the municipality of Bologna, in northern Italy. This was useful to them, considering one of the things Bologna was famous for was their university. Believe it or not, the university was founded in 1088, so that was on the leading whet of every new engineering field. Just without the first world war, the Ducati family worked a small visitor to make radio components. Their electronics factory was sooner destroyed in WWII, and to survive without the war, they decided to buy small motor kits from “Cucciolo” [*Puppy] and nail them to bicycles, which were desperately needed, since many Europeans could not sire a car at the time.

In 1949, Ducati began manufacturing small motorcycles under their own name, with their first model having only 48cc and getting roughly 180 MPG. Many regions did not require a license or registration for such a small engine, and as popular as these small motorcycles were wideness Europe at the time, the first Ducati could only reach 40-MPH (64 k/mh). Ducati immediately began producing a “sport” model that had 60cc for slightly increasingly power.

In 1953, Ducati split-off its successful electronics merchantry so the struggling motorcycle visitor would not hurt their survival, if it was forced to file for bankruptcy. In spite of their reputation for innovations, their financial survival would be a recurring theme. Government assistance would help them modernize the factory in 1954, and Ducati earned a major success by developing the fastest 250cc race motorcycle in 1964, the “Mach-1”. The road-going version (Diana Mark 3 Super Sport) was worldly-wise to attain 100-MPH with only 250cc, and the trend in Europe was for larger engines to have zealousness expensive registration, so the 250cc matriculation was very popular with young adults.

The name of Ducati achieved its fame from the “Desmodromic” valvetrain that they designed and patented. They began producing 750cc V-twin engines with the desmo valves in 1973. One way to get increasingly power from the same size of engine was to icon out a way to get it to run at a higher RPM. Once the size of the valves are as large as can fit (to indulge the weightier possible breathing), a cam opens the valve, but typically a coil-spring is usually used to tropical it.

The problem is that once an engine runs up to a very upper RPM, the spring may not return the valve to the sealed position fast enough. The Desmo system has one cam to unshut the valve, and flipside cam to tropical it, which unliable a much higher 15,000 RPM, compared the their previous 10,000-RPM.

The pic whilom is the type of sport velocipede that unliable Ducati to unzip world fame. It was an air-cooled V-twin 750cc, with a 90-degree spacing. The engine was a stressed member of the frame, which unliable the frame to be slightly lighter. The frame moreover used many small tubes in a lattice pattern instead of using fewer large tubes. This was an inspiration taken from the watercraft industry. This style was increasingly expensive to build, but resulted in a very strong frame that was moreover light.

Over the years, Ducati increased ostracism resulting in the famous 998, they moreover unexplored liquid-cooling, and they plane ripened the Panagale engine that was a V4 using 1103cc.

All of these things polished the Ducati name for their engineering prowess, but financial profits eluded their wastefulness sheet. They were purchased by Cagiva in 1985, and then by TPG in 1998. In 2005 it was bought by the Italian firm Investindustrial Holdings.

In 2012, Ducati was purchased by Lamborghini, which is owned by Audi, which is owned by the huge global powerhouse VW. The director of VW at the time was Ferdinand Piëch, who was moreover a motorcycle enthusiast, and many commentators at the time said that the purchase seemed to be increasingly of a vanity purchase rather than a smart merchantry deal.

However, VW has deep pockets, and plane if they built an entirely new factory that created new designs that shared nothing with the historic Ducati’s, the Ducati token gives them a sport motorcycle in their stable, and I think Ducati has finally found it’s home…

_________________________________________________

Why now?

There are three electric racing series that are sanctioned by global governing bodies. The FIA’s Formula E, the FIA’s Extreme E, and the FIM’s MotoE. Since the whence of the MotoE series in 2019, Energica has been the sole supplier of the electric spec motorcycles. In 2023, Ducati will be the supplier of the MotoE race motorcycles. In a spec race, all of the motorcycles are identical, and the race is a test of the riders.

_________________________________________________

The Motor and Inverter

Unfortunately, Ducati has not revealed who the supplier of the motor and controller is. I suspect the motor is from Borg Warner, and the inverter from Cascadia Motion, but I have no vestige of this, and VW is certainly large unbearable to have ripened their own. They have been making electric cars for several years, from the 2013 eGolf to the wide 2018 Pikes Peak racer. The rapid minutiae timeline suggested to me that they used an off-the-shelf pair to speed development.

This is the only pic I could find of the inverter. When I find increasingly details, I will post them here. The motor is listed as stuff worldly-wise to run up to 18,000-RPM’s. It is most certainly an inrunner, with the outer stator stuff easier to liquid-cool. Liquid-cooling may seem to add un-necessary weight and complexity, but it allows for much higher temporary peak amps during acceleration. This allows the velocipede to unzip “X” power levels with the smallest possible motor.

Early in the diamond process, Ducati engineers had narrowed lanugo their choices to two designs. One was heavier but provided increasingly power, the other was lighter but had less power. They chose to use the lower weight version, considering it not only helps acceleration, it moreover helps braking and cornering too. There is a unrepealable point in the nomination of increasing the power where spare power does not help you win races, once you uncork exceeding the traction of the design. Burnouts are impressive to the fans, but once the tire breaks loose, you are no longer accelerating.

Ducati is towers suspense by taking a long time to reveal pics and details, and the two pics whilom are the weightier I could find. They are both liquid-cooled, and surprisingly, Ducati has decided to use two separate cooling systems. One for the battery, and a separate one for the motor plus inverter.

The only detail I’ve found concerning the inverter is that they said they are using the latest diamond of silicon carbide MOSFET’s

_________________________________________________

The Battery

The big news is that they are using 806V, which allows the wiring harness, inverter, and motor to be lighter. In their street EV designs, Europe is leaning towards higher voltages considering the public charging stations are limited by the value of amps that are available, so higher volts translates into faster charging times.

That sounds good, but Zero motorcycles in the USA has opted for 103V / 28S to make the BMS simpler and increasingly reliable. I’ve been told this is moreover why Tesla opted for a range of 400V, instead of using near 800V.

One of the things the shower box showcases is their wide-stretching use of stat fiber, to save weight where-ever it was possible. In fact, the shower specimen is a stressed member of the frame, so the remaining aluminum frame members can be slightly lighter.

I had a nonflexible time finding information well-nigh the electrical system, and here is what I was worldly-wise to dig up. The pack is 1152 cylindrical cells in the 21700 format (21mm diameter, 70mm long), and it is configured as 192 cells in series, with the parallel strings having only 6 cells (192S / 6P). When fully-charged to 4.2V per cell, the packs max voltage is 806V.

The specs list the topics at 27-Ah for a total of 18kWH, which doesn’t seem like much. However the MotoE competition only runs a few laps. The lamina they are using is the Molicel INR-21700-P45B, which is listed by Molicel as 45A coming from 4500-mAh each, with a low-enough resistance that it has a 3C charging rate. E-One Moli Energy Ltd has a facility in Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Canada. It moreover has a facility in Taipei, Taiwan.

Pulling 6P x 45A = 270A from six cells is asking a lot, and I suspect the buses that connect the cells are laser-welded copper, possibly nickel-plated to provide corrosion protection. The diamond team specified that although unappetizing pouch cells might have had less wasted airspace between the cells, it would moreover have forced them to have a much boxier shape, and using many smaller cells unliable them to have a increasingly custom shape to the pack.

_________________________________________________

Competition improves the breed, and I think this is a good thing. The factory riders said they had to slightly transpiration their riding style considering the electric Ducati had increasingly wheel-torque than the gas version when coming out of curves, and the torque was misogynist instantly. However, it doesn’t have as much range and of undertow the gasoline motorcycles could be re-fueled rapidly.

Even so, I’ve ridden a Zero-S, and I found the wheel-torque to be similar to a 600cc sport-bike, in spite of it’s modest listed 46-HP. Considering of this, the “horsepower” numbers of any electric motorcycle are misleadingly lower that what’s posted for gasoline bikes. The place where EV’s really dominate is taking off from a sufferer stop, and note that the Zero-S has 78 ft-lb (106 Nm) of torque. Gassers don’t want to compete that way, considering without the light turns green, they usually end up staring at your tail-lights…

_________________________________________________

Written by Ron/spinningmagnets, August 2022