Vespa is said to be on track to announce an all electric scooter in the second quarter of 2011 according to a source inside the Italian company. Vespa’s parent company Piaggio is currently building and selling a hybrid 3-wheeled scooter called the MP3 Hybrid which has seen limited success in Europe.

The decision by Vespa to produce an electric scooter is almost certainly a catch-up move after the announcements of both the Mini and Smart electric scooters in 2010. Vespa has reportedly been developing an electric model since late 2009 that will be based on the same platform as the LX 150 (pictured above) and will offer similar power output from a single rear hub mounted electric motor and lithium-ion battery pack.

The first model will be trialled in both Europe and the USA in limited numbers before being offered for sale in late 2012.

As with all anonymous sources, reliability is not guaranteed and as such this news should be taken with a grain of salt, however the information does all fit together rather well with what we would expect and we did manage to confirm that the source works for Piaggio.

We’ll update with further information as soon as possible.

-To stay in the loop join our Facebook page grab the RSS feed or join us on Twitter @ElectroVelocity –