Our Belgian friends at MaxxMoto continue to have the pulse on the upcoming Ducati V4 Superbike, posting today what appears…

News from San Francisco tell us that Alta Motors has begun production on its electric supermoto, the Alta Redshift…

Yamaha Motor Europe has begun its teaser campaign for what we expect to be a new adventure bike in…

If you are going to race at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, you might want to bring something a little bit more peppy than a stock Ducati Hypermotard – not that the Italian street bike isn’t tons of fun, but its now-rated 110hp is going to be robbed blind at it approaches the 14,000+ foot summit. That is where Michael Woolaway’s latest project for Deus Ex Machina comes into play, as Woolie has taken the Hypermotard, dropped massive amounts of power into its chassis, and then stripped every last bit of unnecessary weight off the machine. With 200hp on tap, and a paltry 345 lbs measured when fully fueled and on the scales, Woolie’s Pikes Peak Hypermotard is the ultimate in function before form. Of course, the minimalist technical requirements play into Woolie’s bare-bones design as well.

Just in case you have been living under a rock, or been the victim of a massive coma, Ducati is set to debut a new superbike with a V4 engine. The news is a pretty big deal in Ducati circles – the Italian brand finally abandoning the v-twin format for its superbike offering. Although…this isn’t the first Ducati superbike with a V4 engine, nor is Ducati unfamiliar with making four-cylinder machines. A limited edition machine, the Ducati Desmosedici RR was bred as an exclusive street bike, with obvious inspirations coming from the MotoGP machine, including its “twin pulse” firing order. What does this all have to do with the here and now though? Ducati is about to repeat the process, albeit with a superbike that is more fit for mass production.

A couple days ago, we told you that Ducati would be making the updated electronics package on the 2017 Ducati 1299 Panigale, called DTC EVO, available to 2015 and 2016 Panigale owners. The software update lets the Panigale take full-advantage of the inertial measurement unit (IMU) that is onboard, letting the traction control not only manage wheelspin, as it does on the 2015 and 2016 models, but also allowing it to control how much rear-wheel slide is allowed, as on the 2017 machine. While DTC EVO is standard on the 2017 model, the software wasn’t developed in time for the earlier 1299 Panigale models. Thankfully, it is an easy feature to add retroactively. Unthankfully though, Ducati is charging a pretty penny for the update: $565 MSRP.

If you happen already to own one of the 2017 Ducati 1299 Panigale models, including the recently released Ducati 1299 Panigale R Final Edition and Ducati 1299 Superleggera models, then you already have the latest and greatest electronics suite from the Italian manufacturer, dubbed the Ducati Traction Control EVO (DTC EVO). But, if you own a 2015 or 2016 Panigale, whether it be a “base” model or “S” model, you have been out of luck when it comes to taking full advantage of your bike’s Bosch inertial measurement unit (IMU)…until today. Ducati is announcing that it will retrofit its DTC EVO system for older 1299 Panigale machines, so they can take advantage of IMU’s ability to manage sliding the rear wheel, via a revised algorithm.

KTM was the first major motorcycle manufacturer to debut a production-ready electric motorcycle, all the way, way back in 2011. In true KTM fashion though, it has taken six years for the “Ready to Race” brand to be ready for the US market with its electric motorcycle design. This is because KTM North America is finally bringing the KTM Freeride E-XC to the United States, starting with a handful of dealerships (11, to be precise) who will carry the electric dirt bike, reportedly in limited quantities. Your guess is as good as ours as to why it took so long for KTM to bring the Freeride E-XC to the USA, though we have a pretty good idea why its debut is happening at this particular point in time. Even still, today’s news is just the first step to a full rollout.

We keep hoping that Suzuki will reinvigorate the venerable Hayabusa brand, and bring an updated version of its high-speed…