While sales of hybrid vehicles continue to rise there are some places where even hybrid vehicles can feel excessive and over sized. Luckily, Piaggio has announced a HyS, which is a “parallel” hybrid scooter in which a combustion engine and an electric motor are mechanically and electronically linked and simultaneously supply power to the wheel.

In this linked gas/electric engine, the gasoline engine behaves like a normal catalysed four-stroke engine with excellent performance and distance range on the one hand and low emissions and fuel consumption on the other. Due to its "parallel" status, the hybrid scooter will be allowed into the restricted traffic zones in most cities and is still perfect for travel out of town.

Piaggio HyS will look like the well known Vespa LX, Piaggio X8 or MP3 models and will feature a battery charge indicator on the dashboard. The battery can be recharged from an electricity source by inserting a normal cable into the plug provided for this purpose. Charging time is about three hours. If that isn't geek chic, I don't know what is.

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