Piaggio built a connected e-bike — and buried it because the scooter shop couldn't sell it

Piaggio unveiled the Wi-Bike in Milan in May 2016: an electric-assisted bicycle designed and built entirely in its Italian plants, with a smartphone app, a security code linking the display to the motor, and a fitness mode that adjusted how much the motor helped so a rider could hold a target effort. Prices started around 2,899 euros. It was pitched as a step beyond the scooter — mobility, leisure and fitness in one machine.

The trade version of what happened next, repeated on e-bike owner forums rather than in any Piaggio statement: the bikes went to the same dealers who sold Vespas and mopeds, and those dealers treated a 3,999-euro connected bicycle the way they treated a scooter accessory. Owners describe hunting for a shop that could even diagnose a fault. When Continental, which supplied the belt drive, pulled out of the e-bike business in 2020, Wi-Bike owners say support for that whole line went with it.

Piaggio never announced a discontinuation. What owners noticed instead was quieter: online registration for the Wi-Bike range closed in October 2021, dealers who had carried it stopped, and the only trace left on Piaggio's own retail sites became leftover accessories for a bike no longer sold. The story circulates among e-bike owners as the case of a manufacturer that built a genuinely engineered product and then handed it to a sales network built for something else entirely.