Indeed, Asia is a very important market for Moulton.
The reasons you mentioned are fully correct.
But for Japan and also South East Asia, there is one more reason: road race bikes with small wheels have always been very popular in Japan and now also in South East Asia.
There are several local brands making such bikes. Tyrell is one of them.
Several high end Moulton models like the AM Speed, Speed (often called Super Speed in Asia) and NS Speed (there is a separable version also called Single Pylon still available in Asia) are road race bikes with small wheels.
So these Moulton models, I would say by accident (because they were not developed originally for that market) perfectly fit that market demand.
For the Esprit, if you look at the picture below extracted from the Esprit webpage (
MOULTON Bicycle Company) you can see that it is build like the TSR and SST and is not a "shot-in"tube construction.
