What did you do during your pandemic downtime? It’s OK if the answer is “not much,” but some people got creative. Take Energica Motor Company, which teamed up with Italian electric motor specialist Mavel to come up with an entirely new motor for its machines. It’s called EMCE, which is short for “Energica Mavel Co-Engineering,” because that’s exactly how it got made. What does it mean for Energica’s electric motorcycles? Let’s take a look.
Energica says it’s a 300V, liquid-cooled, hybrid synchronous motor (HSM) with an adaptive control inverter. Both the motor and inverter now share a liquid cooling system, which both simplifies the overall design, and also results in greater thermal efficiency.
By and large, Energica is making a lot of promises with its description of all the benefits the EMCE has to offer: lower center of gravity coupled with a 10-kilogram (22 pound) weight drop over the previous unit, higher peak power output, increased range, and significantly reduced maintenance intervals. Can it possibly deliver?
For a start, a 22-lb decrease in weight paired with a lower center of gravity seem like two things that just about any rider can appreciate. Claimed peak power output jumps up to 169 horsepower, with sustained horsepower getting a small bump to 147 fully-charged ponies. Torque as configured on the Ego+ is 159 lb-ft, and on the regular Ego, it’s 148 lb-ft, which is still nothing to sneeze at. Top speed is electronically limited to 150 miles per hour. Zero to 60 times range across the Egos, based on model, with the regular Ego boasting a 2.9-second time, the Ego+ totting up a 2.8-second time, and the Ego+ RS version dropping it down to 2.6 seconds.
One thing electric bikes have in common with combustion bikes is that your range/fuel consumption will vary based on how you ride the thing. Unfortunately, since humanity collectively still hasn’t figured out how to power electric bikes as quickly as you can fuel combustion ones, that’s a challenge still to be overcome. Energica claims that the EMCE motor offers a five to ten percent range increase over the outgoing motor—but of course, that will remain to be seen as people get their hands on bikes powered by this new motor. All OEMs can, after all, say lots of things.
Now, here’s an incredibly significant difference between the old motor and the EMCE. While electric bikes generally require less routine maintenance than combustion bikes, that doesn’t mean they require zero maintenance. Energica previously recommended a 6,000-mile interval on both transmission oil and motor coolant. However, the EMCE motor now only requires transmission oil to be changed every 18,600 miles, and motor/inverter coolant every 28,000 miles. If performance in real-world riding conditions isn’t negatively impacted, that’s a pretty huge difference.
These changes all look fantastic on paper, but how will they fare in customer hands? We can’t say at this point, but we look forward to seeing.
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