A good collection of links.
Many of those bikes would serve ordinary commuters well. It's refreshing to see so many bikes thoughtfully designed with practical purposes in mind, rather than trying to mimic specialized racing machinery.
That said, as much as I want to like these bikes a lot, I don't. Even some of the nice-looking Koga-Miyatas. Too many of those commuting or utility machines are designed with the idea of selling bikes to people in the U.S. who are casual about bicycling per se. So, there are too many design compromises for those bikes to be ideal commuters or utility bikes, in my mind.
In particular, the linked bikes seem largely aimed at the sort of rider who is intimidated by, or just does not want, drop bars and a more stretched out top tube. I understand this approach. The success of mountain bikes and their imitators has apparently taught bike manufacturers that they cut out 3/4 of their potential market, or so, if they put drop bars on a longer bike. But whatever is true for selling bikes to people who are new to cycling, it's a mistake to have a commuter or utility bike that doesn't have drop bars and a more forward geometry, in my view. It is not just racers who can benefit from cutting through the wind.
Also, some of the manufacturers are apparently trying to push the market toward expecting more complicated, unnecessary, and expensive technology in everyday roadbikes. The disk brakes on the Novarro are a case in point, but the suspended frame of the Koga-Miyata Gran Tour is another example. These things are just not needed on paved roads.
The next item is more a matter of preference, but I don't care for generator lights. Even the best dyno hubs rob their riders of ~7 watts when the light is on. That's over three percent of a 200W effort, and that's no small price to power a dim headlamp. Battery lights can light up a lot more of the road for the money, and they don't rob a rider of anything comparable to a generator's take. I know that a generator eliminates recharging, but to my mind it's just not that hard to deal with batteries, especially now that smart rechargers are available for reasonable prices.
As much as I like the included features on many of the linked bikes -- fenders, coat guards, lights, chainguards, and kickstands -- I prefer a bike like, say, the venerable Trek 520 as a base for a commuter rig to any of them.
www.trekbikes.com
(Follow the menus.)
The 520 (and other comparable tourers) has the right geometry for road riding, which is to say it is designed for road riding and does not imitate mountain bikes. It's got long chainstays, though, so you can mount sizable bags in the rear. Unlike all of the linked bikes, too, the front forks will support another rack.
The 520's not cheap. Trek wants over twelve hundred bucks for it now. But if you added fenders, a kickstand, a front rack, lights, and some kind of ring guard, the total price would still be comparable to, or less than, the nicer Koga-Miyatas. But the 520 would be a better machine for many people.
As far as that goes, by the way, I think that what many American commuters need is a bit different than the northern Europeans. Things in North America tend to be a bit more spead out, with suburbs, large malls, big grocery chains, and so on. So, many practical rides will be significantly longer over here.