Two-wheel-drive electric bike packs its own generator
The ongoing Ukraine conflict has already proved to be a turning point in modern warfare by demonstrating that cheap drones can outwit million-dollar hardware and the country’s military has wholeheartedly adopted electric motorcycles as battlefield transport.
Like a drone, a motorcycle is cheap, lightweight, easy to make and simple to distribute to the front line. Make it electric and it’s also nearly silent, high-speed transport, at least over short ranges, and much more resistant to thermal imaging than a combustion engined vehicle. Earlier this year Ukraine adopted the Wolfstorm electric motorcycle into its armoury as a lightweight, fast off-roader, and now it’s added another EV bike in the form of the MUL.E.
Presumably pronounced ‘Mule’, the MUL.E takes on a different role to the Wolfstorm, with a design more akin to a two-wheeled ATV. It uses wide, low-pressure ATV tyres to claim a level of mine resistance by reducing the amount of ground pressure, and there’s a hub-mounted electric motor in each wheel, making its two-wheel-drive for improved offroad ability and proving a level of redundancy: even with a damaged motor, it’s still mobile with the other one.
Only one image of the bike has been supplied by Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence, and it’s not 100% clear that it isn’t AI-generated (that front suspension and steering setup looks distinctly strange), but the Ministry claims that while it’s battery-powered for silent electric running, the bike also has its own on-board petrol generator. That generator is strapped where you’d normally find a fuel tank, and can be used to recharge the bike’s batteries on the go when silence isn’t necessary, as well as being removable to be used as a field generator.
