Commercial & public vehicles

A vehicle programme succeeds when passengers, drivers and operators all get what they need. MODYN brings strategy, design, engineering and CMF together under one roof, so brand identity, interior layout and manufacturability are resolved together instead of in sequence.

Every project starts in the operating context: routes, duty cycles, boarding flows, cleaning and maintenance. We observe and interview passengers, drivers and fleet teams, and translate what we learn into layouts, ergonomics and materials that survive daily service.

The vehicle architecture comes first. Package, interfaces and platform decisions made early determine cost, weight, tooling and how one design scales across lengths and variants — the same architecture-first approach we apply to bicycles and child transport.

• Vehicle architecture & platform strategy — We help define package, interfaces and platform logic before styling begins: door positions, seating modules, battery placement, variant strategy. These decisions set the cost, weight and tooling envelope for the whole vehicle family.
• Exterior design & brand identity — Recognisable exteriors that carry one brand across a full vehicle range while meeting aerodynamic and regulatory requirements — evolving an existing design language or defining a new one.
• Interior & passenger experience — Layout, flow and comfort for every passenger, from step height and standing room to seat ergonomics and accessibility. Interiors that board quickly, feel calm and are easy to keep clean.
• Driver environment — Sightlines, reach zones, posture and interface layout that keep drivers comfortable and alert through a full shift, in urban stop-and-go work and on long-distance routes.
• CMF: colour, material & finish — Fabrics, panels, trim and lighting chosen for perceived quality and hard daily use: durable, cleanable, repairable and manufacturable at volume.
• Electric & zero-emission platforms — New drivelines change the package. We design around batteries and electric drive systems and use the freedom they create: lower floors, better sightlines, more passenger space.
• Engineering for production — In-house engineers keep every concept buildable, from feasibility checks to CAD and A-class surfacing for tooling, working directly with client engineering and manufacturing partners.

MODYN is VDL Bus & Coach’s long-standing design partner: brand identity, the award-winning Futura coaches and successive Citea generations, including VDL’s first electric bus, the Red Dot-winning Citea SLFA-e. When VDL’s new batteries and electric drive system called for more than an update, we designed the New Generation Citea from the ground up — a new aerodynamic exterior, an interior that feels bigger and a rethought driver’s environment.

The third-generation Futura is VDL’s new flagship coach — unveiled at Busworld 2025, where it won the Design Award in the coach category, and on the road since January 2026. Working alongside VDL’s design and engineering teams, MODYN helped shape the design theme, proportions and identity elements — the broad stance and characteristic A-pillars — of a coach that pairs the familiar Futura character with up to 15% lower fuel consumption.

Picnic delivers groceries in the Netherlands, Germany and France, and its electric Picnic vehicles (ePVs) are the brand’s most visible presence on the street. MODYN redesigned the ePV’s front end into a friendlier, unmistakably Picnic face — reusing the existing fixing points, headlamps and indicator positions to keep development time short — and carried the design through to CAD A-surfacing for tooling.