i then had a look at the market in this specific sector - and since munich is quite a bad place to get an idea of urban motorcycling, i connected uni work and pleasure and visited paris with a friend from the project in the winter holidays. what you see there is mainly scooters, three-wheelers and small 125/250cc machines. 125/250cc machines with their nice size and non-toyish look. with reasonable and manageable dimensions. the downside being their rather difficult operation with gearshift and the either old models, or the new, totally overstyled plastic transformers that want to look like 1000cc kawa ninjas.
The scooters on the other hand with their small size and the total ease of use - but of course with the teenager image, which my target group is definitely not looking for.
I believe the benefits of both scooters and small motorcycles can be found in electric bikes - nice size/spohistication and absolute ease of use. Current and projected future battery perfomance being absolutely sufficient for urban commuting.
I then went on a tried to show my interpretation of the essential visual appearance of “motorcycles” - the result was this moodcloud.