Could a Legendary Bike Brand’s Latest Patent Change Motorcycling Forever?

As most motorcyclists will tell you, one of the hardest things about learning to ride is mastering the shifting of gears. 

After all, doing so smoothly involves multiple appendages working in concert, as well as a mind acutely tuned to such metrics as RPM and MPH, plus the sound of the engine. 

Ducati

(Don’t even get me started on the abject terror of getting into gear from a dead stop on a steep hill with a car behind you.)

Tuning into this high hurdle — among other steps oriented toward making motos more approachable — an increasing number of brands have been introducing technology to either lessen the burden of shifting or remove it from the equation altogether.

The latest domino to fall (so to speak) is one of the biggest and flashiest names: the 99-year-old, Bologna, Italy-based Ducati. 

The brand’s latest patent filings have me wondering if someday I’ll be telling my other people’s grandkids about a time when riding a motorcycle required engagement with such archaic notions as friction points, shift pegs and something called “the clutch.”

A burgeoning concept

So what exactly is Ducati bringing to the table here? Cycle World writer Ben Purvis has uncovered patent filings that indicate the brand is developing a semi-autonomous gear-shifting system, automating the clutch and allowing the rider to execute shifts using just the foot. 

In this pursuit, Ducati is somewhat late to the game, coming on the heels of shift-easing tech from such brands as Yamaha, KTM, MV Agusta and BMW, not to mention the most active innovator in this space, Honda. 

Honda

The latter brand not only offers a number of bikes equipped with DCT (Dual-Clutch Transmission) — essentially an automatic — but also continues to build upon its E-Clutch system. 

Thanks to an actuator and computer control unit, this tech lets you shift if you like but can also take over the operation of the clutch if you don’t.

Ducati’s pair of patents — which could surface in its sport bikes and even race bikes — appear similar to the E-Clutch in overall effect but differ by favoring hydraulic control, whereas Honda’s system is cable-driven. 

Both patents indicate systems that generate the same results for the rider but through different means. 

Jargon jungle

I shall now try to provide a very surface-level explanation of the two systems that is (hopefully) swift and clear. Please bear with me.

Both versions feature a computer control unit connected to an electric motor driving a ball screw assembly up and down a threaded rod that operates a hydraulic clutch master cylinder.  

Ducati

In the first version, the master cylinder is hydraulically linked to a clutch lever cylinder that enables you to operate the clutch lever in the traditional way, but an additional chamber and piston are operated by the actuator, simulating clutch operation when you don’t squeeze it. 

Ducati

In the second version, the clutch lever is wired to an electronic control unit that, when you pull it in, tells the actuator to disengage the clutch — but again can do so on its own if you don’t.

With both proposed systems, the overall effect for the everyday rider is the same: you can shift gears using the foot peg, whether or not the clutch lever is actually pulled in, rendering it almost vestigial.

Potential game changer?

As I have mentioned, Ducati is not leading the charge here but is simply the latest big brand to take steps toward automatic shifting.

However, this news remains significant in that it’s beginning to feel that the industry’s move toward automatic or at least semi-automatic bikes is accelerating toward the point of no return. 

Now, is this a good thing or a bad thing? As an old bearded curmudgeon who learned how to ride the traditional way, I could quite easily scoff at this trend.

Ducati

However, I would then be guilty of the same folly people like me tripped on several years back, when the automobile industry began to make more automatic transmission cars than stick shifts. 

These days, it is almost impossible to find the latter, especially in the US, and it dawns on me that the two things might in fact be linked.

After all, it’s much easier to learn how to ride a motorcycle if you already know how to drive stick, as the principles are the same, even if different appendages operate different parts of it.

Ducati

For the probably 95 percent of kids coming up now who have never driven a stick shift car, learning to ride a traditional motorcycle is an even bigger challenge than the one I faced. 

With that in mind, I shall take a breath and welcome this potentially gargantuan change in the motorcycle industry. 

After all, as much as I personally love to manually shift a motorcycle, I do not feel the same way about another aspect of moto operation that used to be standard and is now virtually extinct: the kickstart. 

Heck, I’ve never even ridden a bike that had one.

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