In a late-night sweaty panic, I reached for my phone to double-check that some of my takes on Ducati's new Desmo450 MX weren't ridiculous. This is normal when writing stories, sometimes we get a little panicked and triple-check a fact before it goes live, but now there's a new barrier—Google's AI Overview.
Sometimes, Google's AI Overview works wonderfully, like when you're checking what time zone a city is in. But once you venture into more complicated areas or somewhat niche, you're going to get screwed really fast if you blindly follow it. You'd think checking the power output of a motorcycle isn't overly complicated or niche, but that's where you'd be wrong.
Apparently, Ducati's latest entry into the off-road world, the Desmo450 MX, puts out 110 hp. That figure doesn't just make it the most powerful production 450 motocross bike in the world, it means it makes more than double what its closest rivals make. The only issue is that it's not true.
Check out the screenshot that I took in utter disbelief below.
To imagine that Ducati built a 450 motocross bike that puts out 110 hp, isn't just untrue, it's absolutely stupid. Anyone who knows anything about, well, anything knows that 110 hp is way too much power for a motocross bike. It would be unrideable. A number of the world's top Supercross racers have voiced that they believe using 350cc engines might be the best way to move the sport forward.
Then, there's the idea that you'd ever be able to make that much horsepower from a single-cylinder four-stroke engine and have it run for more than a couple of minutes. Now that my Desmo450 MX piece is live, the same Google query produces a different answer, which you can check out below.
Has RideApart's Desmo450 MX article? Yeah, and it's literally highlighted below the AI Overview. Does that piss me off? Yeah, a bit, because it means people are less likely to read the words and opinions that took me quite a while to put together, and those folks won't get the full context of why these specs are important.
Oh yeah, and do you know what new Ducati puts out 110 hp? A DesertX. Come on.
