piaggio's vespa elettrica scooter finally has a price and is about to hit the road

two years after it was announced piaggio‘s all-electric scooter, the vespa elettrica, finally has a price and is set to go on sale. piaggio has shared the starting price of €6,390, or a little over $7,300. 

all images © piaggio 

the italian manufacturer’s vespa’s first all-electric scooter, which was first revealed at EICMA 2016 in italy means easy, but natural driving, with total connectivity and silence, customization and accessibility. preorders are available now in europe ahead of the scooter’s ship date later this year, while customers in the US and china will have to wait until early 2019.

at the heart of vespa ‘elettrica’ is a power unit capable of delivering continuous power of 2 kW and peak power of 4 kW, achieving superior performance to a traditional 50 cc scooter, especially with acceleration, which benefits from the smooth delivery of electric motors. it provides an agile and enjoyable ride on urban roads, while countering pollution from an acoustic point of view.

the ‘elettrica’ guarantees a range of 100 km, and in order to provide a complete response to the growing demand for clean mobility, it also appears in the ‘X’ model which, by placing a generator alongside the electric motor, doubles its range. the lithium-ion battery does not require maintenance or special precautions: for charging it is only necessary to use the cable in the seat compartment and connect the plug to a normal wall-mounted electrical outlet — the time required for a full charge is four hours.

vespa’s electric scooter is not just a silent, environmentally-friendly and technologically advanced vehicle; it is also highly connected: the features offered by a new version of the vespa multimedia platform, a system that connects the smartphone to the vehicle, that can be managed through a new interface that incorporates digital colour instrumentation in a TFT display.