DEVOLUTION

Four billion years ago, a Ural sidecar rig rolled out of the primordial soup and set to lurching about the world, seeking adventure and bears and vodka and whatever the hell else Russian hacks survive upon. Or maybe it was 5 billion years. No one knows. Urals are so old and have been so fundamentally unchanged for so long, all anyone can remember is that they were first manufactured in Russia, in the Ural Mountains, when our solar system was in diapers.

And now, at last, there is change, in the form of an electric Ural. Sort of.

The bike we tested is a factory prototype, a proof-of-concept designed to gauge public interest. Like all modern Urals, it contains a prehistoric leading-link fork; unlike any other Ural, it also holds a lithium-ion battery pack