A Different Kind of Ducati
I used to think Ducati and mountain bikes didn’t go together, but like many other times in my life, I’ve been proven wrong. Apparently, you can buy a Ducati electric mountain bike. The company calls its new pedal and battery-powered bike the MIG-RR E-mtb. You can buy it for a little over $7,100 if you’re in Europe.
Ducati partnered with Thok Ebikes to make the bike a reality. It was first shown off at EICMA in 2018, and now it will officially be for sale. Thok is no newbie to the mountain biking scene. It has extensive experience in the downhill mountain biking world and BMX. If Ducati wanted to do a mountain e-bike correctly, it looks like the company went with the right partner.
According to Motorcycle News, Ducati’s Design Centre and Aldo Drudi’s D-Perf worked closely with Thok Ebikes to ensure the finished product was worthy of the brand’s name.
To be clear, this is no twist-and-go electric bike. The MIG-RR E-mtb is a pedal-assist bike. This means you need to pedal the bike to move it. However, the assist of the electric motor makes pedaling so easy you won’t even break a sweat. I rode a pedal assist bike in the mountains of Whistler, British Columbia, Canada. I found it to be an exhilarating experience. You feel like you kind of feel like you have super-human strength on a bicycle.
The Specs
The bike weighs roughly 50 pounds, has FOX Factory Kashima suspension with tons of travel, Shimano Saint brakes, Shimano XT gear set with 11 speeds, and Renthal handlebars made with carbon fiber. The power unit is a 250 Watt Shimano Steps E8000 motor. The motor weighs just over six pounds, and it can produce an insane 51.6 lb-ft of torque.
The battery is a 504 watt-power unit. Both the electric motor and the battery are snuggled right up next to and basically integrated with the frame of the bike. It uses a regular chain drive like any other mountain bike. The aluminum frame itself looks like any other mountain bike. It comes with a small display showing vital info like charge and the power mode (eco, trail, boost, and powerwalk).
Top speed and range can vary depending on how you ride. If you suck all the juice out of the battery you just pedal home like any other bicycle.
The Ducati MIG-RR E-mtb is interesting because it seems far from what the company usually does. However, with Harley showing off a similar bike—albeit not pedal assist, but a real-deal twist-and-go electric bike—it would seem to me that the motorcycle industry is shifting.
The future might bring motorcycles and regular bicycles closer together. I’ll take a high-speed motorcycle over a pedal-assist or low-speed e-bike any day, but there’s no denying we’ll probably see more of these bikes coming down the pike.