By their very nature, most micromobility solutions need to be stripped back and simple. There’s no room to hide behind heavy excess body cladding or soft trim panels. Nine times out of ten, like a Richard Rogers building, the first thing you see is the structure and it is not easy to make this look good whilst keeping an eagle eye on complexity and cost. It has made us often go back and look at classic small cars and how their designers solved these problems, how they ended up creating timeless products despite the incredible limitations they faced.
One of the secrets is honesty. With smaller, lighter, cheaper vehicles there are fewer places to hide, fewer possibilities to mask ugly joints or awkward structures with bodywork. What you see is what you get. So you better make what you see attractive as well as functional. Sure, it can be unusual, that’s often where its charm lies. Look at the original Citroen 2CV prototype – one headlight and a corrugated, single-curvature front end. Like a straight-talking old friend, we appreciate the lack of bull. Its designers respect and understand us too much to try and pull the wool over our eyes. It’s how we like to be treated as users and what we strive to do as a studio.
