Iconic Vespa scooter goes electric

Source: Green Car Reports

One of the great pleasures of visiting an Asian or a southern European city is lying in your hotel bed early in the morning (awake because you're jetlagged) listening to the different sounds of the city, and the biggest difference is the noisy buzz of scooters.   (Linguists might note that vespa means wasp, and the Italian/Latin word is cognate with the English one)  That's going to be a thing of the past, soon.

The Vespa scooter is undeniably an icon on European streets.

For 70 years, Vespas have buzzed about roadways, but the buzz will soon give way to an all-but-silent hum in the company's latest scooter.

Earlier this month at the Milan Motorcycle Show, Vespa announced its first all-electric scooter, dubbed the Elettrica.

The Elettrica trades a petrol and tank small combustion engine for a lithium-ion battery pack and electric motor rated at 2 kilowatts of continuous power and peak power of 4 kilowatts.

The electric Vespa offers better acceleration than a traditional scooter, with more power than typical 50-cc scooters.

For Europeans, the idea of a silent scooter may come as a relief; the buzz and howl of mopeds and scooters is a common sound and often adds to urban noise pollution.

However, Vespa will also introduce an Elettrica X model with a range-extending generator—so not all Elettricas will be entirely silent.

All-electric Vespas will travel up to 100 kilometers (62 miles) on a single charge, but the X model doubles that range to 200 kilometers (124 miles).

Riders can plug the electric scooter into a standard outlet and charge it fully within four hours, and public charging stations will work as well.

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In third-world countries, the only vehicle a person or a family may own will be a scooter.  Electrifying scooters, especially if they can be charged from an ordinary electric socket could have as big an impact as electrifying the car fleet on carbon emissions and air pollution.