8 June 2026

Purpose-built & right-sized: the future of commercial transport

Over 100 years ago, everything in our cities moved by horse. London alone once had 300,000 of them on its streets. Eventually, as you’d imagine, that number of horses became unmanageable.

The problem hasn’t changed.

75 years ago there were 50 million vehicles on our roads. Today there are 1.6 billion. Our population grew three times in that period. The number of vehicles grew 32 times. A horse is a one-size-fits-all tool for moving things, as are vans. We have replaced one blunt instrument with another.

There has been real progress in how cities move people. Car journeys in Berlin are down 37% since 2008. In London, more than 60% of all trips are now made by walking, cycling or public transport. That direction of travel is positive, but commercial transport continues to head the other way. Light commercial vehicles are the fastest growing vehicle segment in cities. Despite accounting for 11% of vehicles, they contribute 54% of transport emissions and nearly a quarter of all fatal collisions. Urban delivery demand is expected to grow 78% by 2030. More people in cities, more things to move, the same vehicles attempting to do it.

This forces a simple question: how do we move everything with as little as possible?

That question shapes everything we do at Minimal.

Our answer isn’t to remove vans. Vans serve a purpose on our roads, but using a 2.5 tonne vehicle to move 300kg of goods at 8mph isn’t good enough. Economically and operationally, there has to be a better way.

Minimal exists to move our cities towards right-sized, purpose-built vehicles: autonomous platforms moving bulk goods in and out of cities off-peak, vans on suburban routes where they make sense, lower-speed vehicles for urban areas, pedal-assist for dense and pedestrianised zones. The right vehicle for the right job.

There is already proven demand for this globally. Amazon delivered 170 million packages using micromobility in 2024, up 36% in a single year. 35 European cities have committed to zero-emission delivery zones by 2030.

We've measured our impact directly: across 60,000 parcel deliveries in London with Minimal’s Pedal 4, we saw 36% more parcels delivered per hour, 59% lower cost per parcel, and a 99% reduction in emissions. If just 15% of London's parcel deliveries shifted to micromobility, that's £60m in annual savings for businesses, 3,600 fewer delivery vehicles on the roads every day, and the equivalent of permanently removing 8,600 cars from the city.

The economics, rather than efficiency, have always been the issue. E-cargo bikes have historically proven more efficient than a van, but at a higher cost, limiting adoption. We’re fixing this. At £250 a month on a 36-month lease, Pedal 4 costs less than a diesel van and less than existing e-cargo bikes. A more efficient vehicle, without a compromise on cost.

We need more than new vehicles to drive this change.

Taking inspiration from IKEA, it is clear that an entire system is required. To democratise good design and scale it globally, IKEA implemented standardised components, flat-pack architecture, a global supply chain locally adapted for each market, and critically, a target price set before the product was designed.

That's the model we're following. We’re building purpose-built vehicles, right-sized for the city. Core technologies that bring new safety and intelligence to any vehicle. The data and tools for businesses to manage and optimise fleets in a single platform. And a scalable system for manufacturing the right blend of vehicles in each region, where they're needed.

The demand for moving things has changed dramatically. It's time the system we use to meet that demand changed too. At Minimal, we’re working rapidly to drive that change for our cities in years, not decades.