General first solid state battery demonstrator motorcycle

[Theo]

Some of you may know that there has been a series named MotoE in which they raced electric sportsbikes and that Ducati has provided their V21L bikes for the latest years.
Well, that series has gone on hiatus but Ducati has still made a demonstrator for solid state batteries:

It is also the first test vehicle from the Volkswagen group equipped with a solid state battery.
The cells used are the QSE-5 B, having an energy density of 301 Wh/kg: more than the Molicel P60B.
They intend to test it on racetracks.
One thing that I find appealing for high performance use like MX is that apparently those solid state cells work well when warm and should give way less overheating problems.

 

[Beagle]

That's cool to see Ducati keeping on with its electric mobility department, this is much more significant for the industry that the end of MotoE.

However, this "solid state" prototype fuss is quite disappointing honestly. They say these cells might become commercial reality in 5 years yet the energy density at 301 Wh/kg is barely up to actual 21700 cells.

Molicel P50B is at 260 Wh/kg (likely similar to EX/MX1.2), P60B is at 280 Wh/kg, M65A is at 325 Wh/kg.

Solid state is still a long way from production, very hard to scale up and keep it profitable. I mean if it's not better than a standard cell like 21700 it would need to be cheaper and I don't think that's realistic at the moment.

Solid state will have its use, will have it's moment, but that's still pretty far.