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It’s been bad year so far for motorcycle industry CEO’s in the United States, as we hear the Piaggio Group is having a shake-up of their own. After six years with the Italian company, Paolo Timoni is stepping down from his position as President & CEO of the Piaggio Groups Americas office, and will be replaced by Miguel Martinez. Martinez is the former General Manager of Piaggio Spain, and will report directly to Stefano Sterpone, Executive Vice President EMEA & Americas 2-Wheeler Sales & Marketing.

The Piaggio Group is reporting an 11.2% increase in its first quarter 2010 sales across its motorcycle and scooter subsidiaries compared to last year’s numbers. The group netted  €2.9 million for Q1, which is noticable increase from its €4.7 million loss in Q1 of 2009. For motorcycle sales alone, the company saw a 12.4% increase unit sales, with the European market leading the charge.

Last month a video of the DERBI GPR EV showed up on YouTube. It was posted by someone who appeared to be working with Sevcon and it was hard to tell if DERBI was behind the bike. I recently found the blog of Derbi Project Manager Carles Carrera. And guess what, he has a detailed picture of the Derbi GPR EV front and center.

Carles describes the ground up development methodology DERBI and their partners used in designing and building the bike over the course of 3 months. He cites flaws in Brammo, Zero, Quantya, Vectrix mentioning thier “poorly developed mechanical platform” and saying they fail to deliver an electric motorcycle that has all drive components communicating in an orderly fashion.

Spanish moto manufacturer Derbi appears to have built an all electric race bike based on their GPR 125 (shown above). A mysterious YouTube user uploaded a grainy video of a red cloth being ceremoniously pulled from a Derbi sportbike in front of a Derbi branded backdrop. The bike was then shown not-so-silently navigating the tight switchbacks of Parc Motor De Castelloli in Barcelona, Spain and doing it fairly quickly. Video and more after the jump.

The Derbi Senda DRD 50 EVO SM, the pit bike of your dreams that you’ll never own…that is at least as long as while you live in the United States. That’s right, this beauty is available only in Europe right now. Sucker!!!

This mini-supermoto comes complete with a radially mounted front brake caliper, wave brake discs, a rear shock with a piggy-back reservoir, and 50cc’s of pure 2-stroke fun. There’s 211lbs of hooligan fun in this bad boy, and this limited version comes in a sinister black paint scheme (don’t worry, a slower yellow version is available to).

Source: motoblog.it

Maybe if this economy gets worse, the US will join the EU and we can all buy these.