Every technology that a major manufacturer would need to build a viable, extended range electric motorcycle already exists, just not at the price point that makes it a realistic commercial possibility.
The path to building a viable electric motorcycle suitable for distance riding seems, to me at least, to still be a long and winding road. An electric motorcycle that would satisfy riders has to look like a motorcycle, behave like one, keep the emotional connection riders have with their machines and, perhaps most importantly for the US market, go far enough on a single charge.
The open question has been whether the technology exists to meet that combined specification. It does — albeit with a significant and critical caveat. Each component can be sourced today: a patent from Ducati addresses behavior and component configuration [1], a car shown at Monterey this month demonstrates an innovative way of building the structure [2], and cells with the necessary energy density are shipping from specialist plants [3]. The only problem is the cost.
I keep a keen eye on developments in this area, primarily because one of my companies supplies temperature monitoring devices to various automotive manufacturers that have established contracts with Divergent, the company that built that car. Our equipment is used both in the production process and to monitor electrical systems in the finished vehicles. That commercial interest runs alongside an academic one: my research interests involve what happens when a human being combines with a motorcycle. For many years I have investigated how rider and machine become a single unit, and how observers, both inside motorcycle culture and outside it, interpret that hybrid entity and give it meaning. It’s niche, fulfilling work. There are a few occasions when my business world and academic world cross over, but this is one, and the subject has really got my attention. These are fascinating developments in engineering, and I am interested to better understand if and how they might change the machines we ride.
Ducati’s filing, made on 8 September 2025 and published on 19 March 2026, describes an electrically powered vehicle in classic motorcycle configuration: a chassis, a saddle to be straddled, a front wheel and a driven rear wheel [1]. The motor is mounted transversely and turns between 17,000 and 20,000 rpm, with 18,500 rpm given as the preferred value, driving a gear reduction and a chain to the rear wheel. The rotor position sensor is mounted on the transmission, downstream of the motor, and the gears are distributed across two parallel planes. The filing is explicit about the reason for the sensor’s placement: it does not adversely affect the transverse dimension of the machine [1]. Width costs a motorcycle lean angle and ergonomics, and battery packs and electric drivetrains add width.
The filing commits Ducati to nothing, and the company has, so far, announced no product. What it shows is a manufacturer spending its engineering effort on making an electric machine behave like a motorcycle, using familiar hardware: a relocated sensor and a stack of gears, with a chain final drive. I read filings of this kind as manufacturers staking claims: the components are not affordable yet, and a patent held now is a position on how the machine gets built when they are.
A technology that addresses the structural problem, the mass of the machine and where that mass sits, was on display at Monterey. Czinger showed an open-top version of its 21C hypercar during Car Week, priced from $2.75 million for a run of thirty cars [2]. I wasn’t at Monterey this year, and I saw the car the way most people did, in social media posts. What caught my eye was the shapes of the various components installed in it. It looks entirely different to anything else I have seen in automotive production, and the way it is built might present an opportunity for motorcycle manufacturers.
Czinger brands the approach BioLogic Engineering [2], and the name describes the method: the shapes are biological because the design software puts material only where the loads run [5]. The reveal’s showcase component, which the company calls the BrakeNode, prints the brake caliper and its hydraulic passages together with the suspension upright as a single structure; Czinger’s claims for it include a 15 percent reduction in stopping distance and a part that is 37 percent hollow [2].
Divergent Technologies, the builder, was founded in 2014 in Torrance, California, by Kevin Czinger, according to the company’s own account [4]. Its product is a production system called DAPS, described in its own material as a software-defined production platform, and it has three layers: generative design software that computationally engineers a structure from its loads and interfaces; laser powder bed fusion using proprietary alloys; and robotic assembly that joins the printed parts without design-specific tooling or fixtures [5]. The commercial claim underneath all of it is zero design-specific capital expenditure [5]. With no tooling bought, there is no obligation to keep a design in production long enough to recover its cost.
Divergent’s chief technology officer has said that commercially available aluminum alloys worked well enough as heat exchangers, but that none of them had the energy-absorption characteristics the company needed for crash structures; even Scalmalloy, a material used in Formula One, was not sufficient, and a custom crash alloy had to be developed [6]. The trade magazine feature that reports the company’s figures puts over 350 additively manufactured components in the 21C’s structure, suspension, brakes and drivetrain [6]. Bugatti followed: Divergent’s announcement of the partnership has it designing, engineering, additively manufacturing and assembling chassis and suspension components for the Tourbillon [7].
Divergent entered aerospace and defense in 2022 with initial work for General Atomics, and by late 2025 reported contracts with dozens of aerospace and defense customers, including Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Triumph Group (the aerospace supplier, not the motorcycle manufacturer). The same announcement, on the company’s own accounting, reported more than fivefold revenue growth and over 200 new aerospace and defense part numbers introduced in the first half of 2025 [8]. In June 2026 it announced the Monolith One, a laser powder bed fusion machine delivering 24 kW through twelve 2 kW lasers with a build volume of 700 by 700 by 835 millimeters, alongside a second factory of 430,000 square feet in Long Beach. The stated purpose of that factory is to produce tens of thousands of munition airframes a year [9].
Defense capital is reaching other layers of the supply chain. Sila, which makes silicon-carbon anode material at Moses Lake in Washington, received a conditional loan commitment of $1.4 billion from the US Department of War’s Office of Strategic Capital in August 2026 to expand that plant [10]; the company’s own claim for its anode is 20 to 40 percent higher energy density than the graphite it replaces [11]. The $300 million private round Sila closed in July was pitched at customers in artificial intelligence, defense, aerospace and electronics [11]. Arc, which builds electric marine powertrains, raised $50 million in March 2026 to move beyond sport boats into commercial and defense workboats [12]. Between September 2025 and August 2026, all three announced new capital tied wholly or partly to defense demand [8][10][11][12].
The defense systems Sila’s material is destined for present the same challenge as an electric motorcycle: energy density, the energy a battery stores per kilogram of its mass. Range is a direct consequence of it, and a motorcycle is only ever going to be viable as electric transportation when the pack it can carry stores enough energy to go far enough. The International Energy Agency puts demonstrated lithium-ion cells at up to roughly 300 watt-hours per kilogram, and the US Department of Energy describes typical commercial graphite-anode cells at around 220 [13]. Amprius, a specialty silicon-anode maker, launched a 450 watt-hour-per-kilogram cell in 2025 for aviation and defense applications, drones among them, and has shipped 400 watt-hour-per-kilogram cells [3].
Automotive electrification has delivered reliable cells with usable range, and the trade-off has been weight; car manufacturers have absorbed it by taking mass out of the structure and the interior instead. Lightweight materials offset the weight of the battery and the motor, or allow a smaller and cheaper battery at the same range, which is how the United States Department of Energy describes the mechanism in its own lightweighting program record [14]. That program targets a 25 percent reduction in the mass of the vehicle glider, meaning the whole vehicle minus its powertrain, transmission and fuel, against a 2015 baseline of 1,016 kilograms; one project within it cut a front door from 38 to 22.9 kilograms, taking 38 percent out of the interior trim and 48 percent out of the glass [14]. There’s obviously no interior trim or glazing to strip from a motorcycle, so in order to reduce mass the savings have to come out of the underlying structure of the machine — the frame, forks, swingarm and possibly some of the other components. That is where I envisage the manufacturing technology of the kind Divergent has created might be used, subject to its cost.
Range is the issue where the current shortfall has the greatest significance. Honda’s WN7, the company’s first electric motorcycle, carries a 9.3 kWh fixed lithium-ion battery and a rating of 140 kilometers, or 87 miles, on the WMTC cycle [15]. I regard WMTC as a more honest measure than the urban-cycle figures some manufacturers quote, but it still includes low-speed running, and sustained highway riding consumes energy at a considerably higher rate. On longer journeys I stop for fuel somewhere between 150 and 200 miles, depending on the bike, and 150 real highway miles is the point at which I’d consider an electric motorcycle a serious proposition. On my own estimate, assuming roughly 185 watt-hours per highway mile rather than working from a measured figure, reaching 150 highway miles requires about three times the WN7’s pack, and 250 miles closer to five times it. A gain of that size can only come from the chemistry rather than from the packaging.
Divergent’s automotive customers build very expensive cars in very small numbers, and defense procurement offices have paid for capability at prices consumer markets have not sustained. Neither customer needs the technology to be cheap. Motorcycle production is the opposite case: it is extremely price-sensitive, and a machine selling in the low five figures cannot carry components priced for a hypercar. Somebody has to pay for the cost reduction, and for lithium-ion the early volume came from portable electronics: the cells whose prices fell by roughly 97 percent between 1991 and 2016 were sold overwhelmingly into that market [16]. The equivalent volume market for motorcycles is more likely to be the mass commuter fleets of Asia, which would mean defense customers pay the technology’s early costs, and the volume that makes it cheap comes from India and Southeast Asia. That said, the market has some way to go; Ultraviolette registered 694 electric motorcycles in India in July 2026, up 406 percent on the previous July’s 137. Those figures are telling, deriving from both a reaction to global events and to domestic fuel legislation; they come from the Vahan registration portal, and the trade press reporting them attributes the rise to a mid-May petrol price increase and to hesitation over the E20 fuel transition [17]. A few thousand machines a year, each with a pack of the WN7’s size, comes to tens of megawatt-hours of cells, against anode plants the company itself describes as gigascale [11]. The company’s subscription scheme, reported this spring, takes the battery off the purchase price: the cells are rented monthly and pass to the owner after five years [17].
The battery packs present their own challenges: structural requirements that no consumer electronics cell had to meet. From my own research, it seems likely that the pack these ranges require will have to act as a stressed member of the chassis while carrying its own integrated cooling and control electronics; it can’t be bolted into an existing frame, and the frame will therefore have to be designed around it. Motorcycle structures are designed around their engines, the densest mass in the machine, and in many cases a stressed member; the pack neither sits exactly where the engine sat nor loads the chassis in the same way that ICE engines loaded it. Also, the environment of use requires that the packs provide outstanding resilience, and the marine sector could helpfully inform motorcycle design: the small-craft lithium standard ABYC E-13, as its clause text is reproduced in marine compliance material, requires packs restrained against shock, vibration and movement, and constructed or installed with adequate water ingress protection in normal operation [18]. Automotive packs sealed inside a car’s floor pan are covered by a different regime; the marine standard assumes an installation that is exposed to water and to constant shock and vibration.
The obstacle to building such structures in motorcycle numbers is tooling. Motorcycle production runs are short: Ducati delivered 50,895 machines worldwide in 2025 across its entire range [19]. Stamped and cast tooling recovers its cost only over long production runs. A manufacturer committing to an electric platform would be amortizing that tooling against cells likely to be superseded before the tooling is paid off, which is a reasonable argument for not committing at all. Divergent’s zero design-specific capital expenditure claim, if it holds, at least removes that argument to some extent [5]. Generative design produces structures that carry their loads with less material, which acts as some compensation for the mass the pack adds, and, similar to the braking system in the Czinger, a printed housing could carry internal cooling passages that would be difficult to cast.
The Monolith One’s build volume of 700 by 700 by 835 millimeters constrains a car structure and comfortably accommodates a motorcycle swingarm, subframe or pack housing [9]. Whether that capacity, currently committed to munition airframes and hypercars, is available to anyone building motorcycles is a separate question, and for the next few years the answer is probably not.
None of this requires a motorcycle manufacturer to develop the core technology. The cells and the printed structures are being developed for use by other customers, and the manufacturer’s task becomes integration. Neither the cells nor the printing capacity are cheap or available yet, so I expect that the first machines built this way will be expensive and few.
One company says the specification is already met. Verge, a Finnish manufacturer, lists a machine called the TS Pro with an all-solid-state battery from its sister company Donut Lab, a claimed 370-mile city range, charging in under ten minutes, and a price of $29,900; it is taking orders, with first deliveries promised for the end of 2026 and new orders scheduled for 2027 [22]. No customer has yet received one [23]. A criminal complaint filed in April 2026 by a former partner alleges that the promised 400 watt-hour-per-kilogram cells measured 268 to 297 in independent tests, and reporting of the dispute records Donut Lab’s chief executive acknowledging that no customer has received a battery meeting the promised figure [23]. I would like Verge to be right, but unfortunately it seems that the measured numbers sit inside the range conventional cells already reach [13].
Put the components together and the machine is technically possible, but the cost to do so is financially absurd. A pack of three times the WN7’s capacity built from 400 watt-hour-per-kilogram cells, housed in a printed structure from a Monolith-class machine and installed to marine practice, describes a motorcycle that only a defense budget would currently pay for. A market of low-five-figure machines clearly cannot absorb any of it. Until the cells and the printing fall in price by the kind of multiple that consumer electronics once delivered for lithium-ion [16], the electric motorcycle that meets the specification is, on my reading, out of financial reach in the short to medium term rather than imminent. The more I learn about electrification, the less viable it appears to be.
Carbon reduction, meanwhile, is proceeding without the battery. Dorna’s announcement of the MotoE hiatus described the motorcycle industry as having “increasingly pivoted towards the development of even more efficient combustion engines, alongside the use of non-fossil fuels,” and MotoGP’s own fuel becomes one hundred percent non-fossil in 2027 [20]; Formula 1’s 2026 power units burn a fully sustainable drop-in fuel alongside their electric motors [21]. In a future piece I will provide my opinion about how sustainable fuels will preserve the theater of circuit racing, by retaining the pit stop and the rapid refueling and tire changes that contribute to the excitement of so many competitive events. For road machines, in the short to medium term, using fuel of that kind in engines riders already understand looks to me like the only realistic route to something approaching carbon neutrality.
In summary, it seems that the only credible electric motorcycles will arrive when someone else has finished paying for the technology needed to make them both practically viable and emotionally desirable. On the evidence of this year, that has not happened yet, and remains some way off.
Ride safe.
Tim
References
- Ducati Motor Holding S.p.A., international patent application WO2026058129A1, “Electrical vehicle,” filed 8 September 2025, published 19 March 2026; inventors Puccetti, Canè, Bertoldi, Cusati, Di Piazza. Full text at Google Patents: https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2026058129A1/en — the filing supports the configuration, transverse motor, 17,000-20,000 rpm (“preferably equal to 18,500 rpm”), sensor on the transmission downstream of the motor, gears “distributed on two planes parallel to each other,” chain final drive, and the width rationale (“does not affect the transverse dimension”). The filing’s own words are “does not affect the transverse dimension”; “adversely” is this essay’s gloss.
- Czinger 21C Spyder revealed during Monterey Car Week (August 7-16, 2026; dates per the organizer’s release: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/monterey-car-week–pebble-beach-concours-delegance-returns-august-716-2026-302839650.html); thirty cars from $2.75M, “BioLogic Engineering” branding: https://www.autoevolution.com/news/all-new-czinger-21c-spyder-is-revealed-during-2026-monterey-car-week-features-biologic-engineering-274159.html; corroborated: https://robbreport.com/motors/cars/czinger-21c-spyder-first-open-top-model-1238554392/; BrakeNode composition and the company’s claims (caliper and hydraulic passages printed with the upright; 15% shorter stopping distance; 37% hollow), manufacturer claims via reveal coverage: https://www.jalopnik.com/2236170/czinger-21c-spyder-more-downforce-than-any-convertible-reveal-specs/
- Amprius SiCore 450 Wh/kg cell launch (April 24, 2025, aimed at aviation/UAV/defense; qualification-stage at launch): https://amprius.com/amprius-launches-sicore-450-wh-kg-high-energy-cell-with-near-term-mass-production-capability-to-scale/; SiMaxx 400 Wh/kg shipping record: https://ir.amprius.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/124/
- Divergent founding (Kevin Czinger, 2014, Torrance): Spear’s interview with Lukas Czinger (July 17, 2025): https://spearswms.com/luxury/divergent-lukas-czinger-on-3d-printing-ai-and-enlightenment/; company self-description (“software-defined production platform”): https://www.divergent3d.com/
- DAPS three layers and zero design-specific capital expenditure: Divergent Series D announcement (PR Newswire, November 13, 2023): https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/divergent-technologies-inc-announces-closing-of-upsized-230-million-series-d-capital-raise-301985962.html
- Kenworthy (Divergent CTO) on alloys, and the 350+ additively manufactured components figure (manufacturer-attributed): “Metal 3D printing in automotive: how the Czinger 21C is redefining next-generation car manufacturing,” Metal AM Vol. 7 No. 4 (Winter 2021): https://www.metal-am.com/articles/metal-3d-printing-in-automotive-how-the-czinger-21c-is-redefining-next-generation-car-manufacturing/
- Divergent-Bugatti Tourbillon partnership (“design, engineer, additively manufacture, and assemble chassis and suspension components”): Divergent release, June 20, 2024 (wire copy): https://www.automotive-technology.com/news/divergent-announces-partnership-with-bugatti-for-design-and-manufacturing-of-tourbillon-structures; Bugatti’s Tourbillon reveal release: https://newsroom.bugatti.com/en/press-releases/the-bugatti-tourbillon-an-automotive-icon-pour-leternite
- Divergent Series E announcement (September 15, 2025) — “In 2022, the company expanded into aerospace and defense with initial work for General Atomics”; “contracts with dozens of aerospace and defense customers, including General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Triumph Group”; “revenue has grown more than 5x in 2025, and in the first half of 2025 alone Divergent introduced over 200 new aerospace and defense part numbers” — all the company’s own figures: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/divergent-announces-290-million-series-e-to-scale-digital-manufacturing-platform-and-meet-growing-us-defense-production-demand-302555989.html
- Monolith One and the Long Beach factory (June 17, 2026) — 24 kW through twelve 2 kW lasers, 700 × 700 × 835 mm build volume, 430,000 sq ft second factory, stated purpose of tens of thousands of munition airframes a year: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/divergent-builds-americas-most-advanced-industrial-metal-3d-printer-monolith-one-and-announces-second-factory-302802466.html
- Sila conditional $1.4B loan commitment, Office of Strategic Capital, August 7, 2026: Sila’s release (names Moses Lake): https://www.silanano.com/press/press-releases/sila-receives-conditional-1-4-billion-loan-commitment-from-u-s-department-of-war-to-accelerate-domestic-battery-technology-manufacturing; government release: https://www.war.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/4566579/the-office-of-strategic-capital-signs-14-billion-conditional-loan-commitment-wi/
- Sila $300M private round (July 21, 2026), customer framing, gigascale anode manufacturing, and the company’s “20-40% higher energy density than traditional graphite” claim for Titan Silicon: https://www.silanano.com/press/press-releases/sila-secures-300-million-in-private-funding-to-ramp-gigascale-anode-manufacturing-and-strengthen-americas-technology-sovereignty
- Arc Series C, $50M, March 19, 2026, expansion into tugboats, ferries and defense vessels: https://arcboats.com/newsroom/arc-boats-series-c
- Cell-level energy density: IEA, Batteries and Secure Energy Transitions (April 2024), demonstrated range ~90-300 Wh/kg at cell level: https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/cb39c1bf-d2b3-446d-8c35-aae6b1f3a4a0/BatteriesandSecureEnergyTransitions.pdf; DOE Battery500 progress update, commercial graphite-anode cells ~220 Wh/kg: https://www.energy.gov/cmei/articles/battery500-progress-update
- US DOE Vehicle Technologies Office, Vehicle Lightweighting Program Record #20-01 (December 31, 2019): https://www.energy.gov/cmei/vehicles/articles/vehicle-technologies-office-program-record-vehicle-lightweighting-program
- Honda WN7 (November 4, 2025) — the release’s wording is “its first electric motorcycle, the Honda WN7,” and it states the 9.3 kWh fixed lithium-ion battery and 140 km WMTC range: https://global.honda/en/newsroom/news/2025/c251104feng.html
- Ziegler, M.S. & Trancik, J.E., “Re-examining rates of lithium-ion battery technology improvement and cost decline,” Energy & Environmental Science 14, 1635-1651 (2021): https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2021/ee/d0ee02681f
- Ultraviolette July 2026 registrations (694, up 406% on 137; Vahan portal data via Autocar Professional, August 13, 2026): https://www.autocarpro.in/analysis-sales/ultraviolette-hits-a-new-high-in-july-694-electric-motorcycles-134073; UV Battery Flex subscription (reported March 2026, company-attributed via trade press; monthly battery rental with ownership transferring to the customer free after five years): https://www.autocarpro.in/news/ultraviolette-cuts-entry-price-of-x-47-by-40-with-battery-subscription-plan-131492
- ABYC E-13 “Lithium Ion Batteries,” clauses 13.6.4 (restraint against shock, vibration, movement — quoted verbatim in the compliance material) and 13.6.5.1 (water ingress protection — paraphrased), as reproduced at https://shop.pkys.com/victron-ng-batteries-abyc-compliance. The standard itself is paywalled (E-13-2025 at the ANSI webstore).
- Ducati 2025 financial results, 50,895 motorcycles delivered worldwide in 2025 (54,495 in 2024) — manufacturer primary: https://www.audi.com/en/press-releases/ducati-presents-2025-financial-results-solidity-and-profitability-in-a-challenging-global-environment-17070
- Dorna/FIM, “MotoE to go on hiatus following 2025 season” (September 11, 2025) — verbatim: “MotoGP fuels will become 100% non-fossil from 2027, increasing from a minimum of 40% non-fossil from 2024” and “The motorcycle industry has increasingly pivoted towards the development of even more efficient combustion engines, alongside the use of non-fossil fuels”: https://www.fim-moto.com/en/news/news-detail/article/motoetmto-go-on-hiatus-following-2025-season (also at motogp.com)
- Formula 1, “2026 regulations explained” — hybrid system “providing almost 50 per cent of the power from recovered electrical energy”; “drop-in” fuels requiring no engine adjustment; Advanced Sustainable Fuels with “nothing in the fuel comes from crude oil”: https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/2026-regulations-explained-all-you-need-to-know-about-f1s-advanced.4h53Szn4Z3VsD6rGcR3LtU
- Verge Motorcycles, TS Pro specification page (company claims as listed at the time of writing): “All solid-state battery by Donut Lab”; up to 370 miles city / 196 highway on the 33.3 kWh pack; “Under ten minutes. NACS fast charging, up to 200 kW”; from $29,900; first deliveries listed Q4 2026 (EU/US) with newer orders and other regions into 2027: https://www.vergemotorcycles.com/ts-pro/
- The Donut Lab dispute and delivery status, via trade reporting: whistleblower Lauri Peltola’s criminal complaint (April 17, 2026) alleging promised 400 Wh/kg cells measured 268-297 Wh/kg in independent tests, the 100,000-cycle claim “extrapolated from lower values” per the CEO, and misrepresented production readiness; Donut Lab and Nordic Nano deny wrongdoing; the CEO acknowledged no customer has received a battery at the promised figure: https://www.motorcycles.news/en/donut-lab-battery-whistleblower-verge-motorcycles/; no confirmed customer deliveries, schedule slipped from Q1 to Q4 2026: https://insideevs.com/news/786388/verge-motorcycles-donut-labs-solid-state-battery-ev/ and https://insideevs.com/news/791709/worlds-first-production-solid-state-battery-motorcycle/