Last year at the EICMA Milan Milan Motorcycle Show, I messed up a new looking vehicle known as Pony P2. Described as a van replacement, the 60 mph (100 km/h) electric motorcycle has a huge shell under the seat and was being prepared for production at the time. Now, a year later, we caught up with the company at the same show to find out how the Ponie P2 is now preparing to hit the road.

The company behind the bike, PNY, has spent most of the past year finalizing its production path and is poised to begin several pilot programs, including with DHL and the local postal service, among others that have signed up for to get some of the first 50. P2 ponies that just rolled off the production line.

With 400L (105 gallons) of storage space between the central cargo area and an optional rear rack, the Ponie P2 really is as close to a ‘van replacement’ as you can get on two wheels . There are some bigger ones four wheel electric cargo bikes there, but they aren’t as fast or as nimble, limiting their use to bike lanes and areas where pavement parking is met with blind eyes.

The P2 Pony might not haul as much cargo as a Sprinter van, but it could do an entire mail delivery route while retaining the same lane-splitting and parking advantages of a motorcycle—not to mention the ability to reach minimum speeds on the highway.

The bike is also as stable as can be, with the big CATL 6.7kWh battery as a flat pack under the main cargo area. This low center of gravity is further aided by the hub motor which keeps the weight of the motor just above the height of the axle. It won’t do the unspoken weight any favors, but neither delivery bike is exactly performance territory.

The P2 even has a pretty good range per charge, rated at 150 km (93 miles) when traveling at city speeds of 35 km/h (22 mph). Jumping down the freeway at top speed will certainly reduce that range figure, but it’s also hard to get the mail in the box accurately at freeway speeds, so riders will eventually have to slow down.

The PNY Ponie P2 seems to straddle the line between motorcycles and scooters, offering seating for the former with utility for the latter. A large 7-inch TFT color display and ABS brakes provide the kind of modern motorcycle features many riders have come to expect, and there’s even a smaller glovebox charging area with an included USB charging port (ideal for the pilot’s own personal items so they don’t get mixed up with everyone else’s packages and postcards).

The company also showed off built-in safety technology from RiderDomea startup that uses computer vision and AI-based sensors to provide 360-degree threat detection specifically for motorcyclists.

The same frame is designed to integrate with several cargo attachments, including the large central cargo box seen on the DHL bike, as well as several smaller boxes such as those used by food delivery companies.

I hope to test one of the first 50 PNY Ponie P2 bikes to be used in future pilot programs with DHL and other customers. So far I’ve only done a static test in the cockpit (above), but the bikes feel strangely normal when you’re sitting on them. They might look like a stretch limousine of the motorcycle world, but they feel like an empty roadster with a comfortable, leg-forward seating position—at least, at rest.

The jury’s still out on how they’ll fare in the wild, but PNY has high hopes that more cities around the world will soon replace lane-blocking cargo vans with lane-splitting cargo bikes like these.