The Piaggio Group celebrated its 130 years of history during an event at the Teatro Vetra in Milan and it did so presenting the book “FuturPiaggio - Six Italian lessons on mobility and life”, a narrative of the brand's chronicles, its great inventions, its undertakings and its staff.
"The book is a summary of what Piaggio is - said Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Roberto Colaninno in a press conference during the event - the testimony of a company and the people who have worked there, of the fact that we are a great country, capable of doing extraordinary things. In its 130 years of history, Piaggio has done extraordinary things. It is a company that has demonstrated the ability to innovate products in a way that is unthinkable in Italy. We invented the helicopter and the patent was then sold, the diesel rail-car, a car that was the forerunner of the 500, we designed aeroplanes and, of course, the Vespa. We have received the baton of this history and now we must take it forward.”
The CEO then laid out the guidelines of the Group's future: “The future of Piaggio is to continue taking the Group's products all over the world. To give a few examples, in the Boston Piaggio Fast Forward offices, Gita was born, a robotic vehicle with thirty young people working on the project, representing the future of global technology in the mobility field. We are also consolidating the Vespa Elettrica project - that we will launch on the market in the early months of next year - and we have launched the “China” project with the idea that electric technology will undergo strong development in that country as the primary solution to what has become an unsustainable transport and traffic problem. It is a project that we are beginning to design now and it is still in the definition and development stage. It will take about a year - Director Colaninno concluded - but China will be a huge electric vehicle market and we believe that Piaggio cannot afford not to be present there.”