Vespa goes electric. The Piaggio group will start production in September and the first examples will be bookable exclusively online from the beginning of October. The electric version of the most famous and loved scooter in the world will be born in the Pontedera plant, the same one where Vespa was born in the spring of 1946. The price it will be in line with the high end of the Vespa range currently marketed at around 6 euros. Vespa Elettrica will therefore be gradually placed on the market starting from the end of October to reach full marketing in November, in conjunction with the Milan Eicma 2018 show, starting from Europe and then being extended to the United States and Asia from the beginning of 2019. It is Piaggio itself that spread the news by publishing a press release on the own site dedicated to the most renowned scooter there is.
Vespa Elettrica, the company continues, will be the first Piaggio Group product to adopt innovative solutions for interconnectivity between vehicles and people.
The first examples, as mentioned, will already be bookable at the beginning of October, only online through a dedicated site, with innovative all-inclusive financing formulas that will complement the traditional purchasing systems.
Vespa Elettrica promises to be the Piaggio Group's first step "towards new horizons of smart interconnectivity between vehicles and people. In the near future, Vespa Elettrica - the group's official note specifies - will be prepared to adopt solutions currently under development for Gita, the robot being built in Boston by Piaggio Fast Forward (and which will go into production at the beginning of 2019), as systems of artificial intelligence with adaptive and sensitive behaviors to every input from the driver. They will recognize the presence of people and vehicles in their vicinity, contribute to the driver's ability to anticipate potential risks, signal traffic and offer an alternative route, provide instant mappings that will help improve urban traffic safety and efficiency. This new generation of vehicles will get to know its owner in depth: it will recognize him in an automated way without a key or remote control, it will anticipate his habits, interact with other devices and with other vehicles on the road and allow a very high degree of customisation”.
The Vespa brand is now experiencing one of the happiest moments in its history, with over one and a half million units sold in the last decade. The first half of 2018 closed with an increase in sales volumes of approximately 10% compared to 30 June 2017.
