The Electric G-Class: Legendary Icon, Terrible EV?!
[Music] This car apparently is a total flop. Or at least that’s how an anonymous Mercedes exec described it earlier this year. And you’re probably thinking, well, it’s because it’s overweight. It hasn’t got any towing ability. It’s got an inefficient drivetrain and compromised utility. And all of those reasons are to blame. But I think the answer is a little bit more nuanced than that. And I’m here to tell you, or at least those of you who are still here and haven’t clicked off in utter disdain at this particular variant’s £175,000 price tag, then this is not worth your money. But perhaps it is worth your guilty pleasure because something is telling you that you secretly love this car, too. So, we’re here to try and make sense of that slightly uncomfortable feeling. Welcome to Everything Electric. Our [Music] three free YouTube channels on EVs and clean energy tech are funded by our fun-packed test drivetastic events in the North, West, and Greater London and events down under. Next up, Everythingele Electric Sydney 2026. Plus, check out everythinglectric.store for merch and much more. Back to the episode. [Music] Now, the original G-Class was launched in 1979, and back then the intention was very much that it was a military rugged utility vehicle. And since then, whilst the boxy brick-like shape has remained largely the same, it has transformed from that symbol of toughness to a symbol of wealth, power, and status. It is the perfect villain car. And in fact, it’s appeared in films like the Born Supremacy, Jurassic Park, A Good Day to Die Again, the Fast and Furious franchise, obviously. And it’s revered among celebrities, too, from Kim Kardashian to Arnold Schwarzenegger to LeBron James. And since 1979, it has made 600,000 of these vehicles, and 200,000 of those just in the past 5 years. Now, this one, the electric version, or more specifically the Mercedes G580 with EQ technology, was launched late last year in 2024, and it has been on sale this year in 2025. And those sales have been poor. Really, really not good at all. And in fact, spotting one of these in the wild is pretty rare because they have sold only a few thousand of them. And actually spotting one in the actual wild is even rarer because only around 10% of vehicles equipped with advanced off-road capability are ever actually used for any kind of dedicated off-roading which is pretty astonishing and astonishing because it would be much more easy to maneuver this vehicle over a boulder than say around a multi-story car park. However, they have still had much noteworthy acclaim. They are very good off-road. And in fact, the Pope got his own special Pope mobile version. Now, I have had this for a bit over a week. I went down to Cornwall to the most astonishing, beautiful, sustainable, self-catering lodge called 3M Beach. Highly, highly recommend it. 14 out of 10, I must say. But it does mean that I’ve done around 750 miles, including the 500 miles to get there and back. So, I have some very honest reflections. [Music] So, starting with the things that I really love, and of course, we should start with the interior because it’s gorgeous. Of course, it’s gorgeous. If you’re spending £175,000, you would expect nothing less. And it does have that sense of real wellthought luxury. This particular version, we’ve got Nappa leather seats in a truffle brown. They’re gorgeous. They’re very in fashion at the moment. And we have an open pore natural walnut wood trim finish, which again is absolutely gorgeous. There also some beautifully machined buttons and sort of knobs and things which again just have that absolutely gorgeous feel to them. Now, I personally really love the seats. They have the right level of squish. The massage is great. It’s the right level of firm. It also does the thing where it even pummel your bottom, which is nice after a long drive. Um, any car in which the seat adjustments are on the door, I think is so sensible because it’s nice to see intuitively what you’re adapting rather than finding the seat controls at the side where you can’t see them. But then, of course, there are some other things that are just really lovely surprise and delight features. So, for example, when you turn on the heated or cooled seats, not just the seat heats or cools, but so too the arms. So, this bit heats up, this bit heats up. Now, that is good and it is really nice, but it does make you kind of sit like this, which for me and someone of my sort of height feels a bit kind of unnatural, but nice nonetheless. And it’s not just additional arm warming that you get either. You can in fact heat and cool your cups here by pressing this button. Either it will cool the surface down. If you press it again, it will heat the surface up. Just a really nice little nod. Probably very unnecessary, but I like it all the same. some other bits and bobs as well. So, infotainment, 10 out of 10 for infotainment, I must say. So, in the comfort area, you can turn on your massage seats. I would prefer that if that was one single button, but it’s fine. Um, but you can also adjust the ambient lighting, and this has a really peculiar effect because if you select a warm lighting profile right now, I have Venice Pink. It’s a really nice warm color, and that does make the interior feel that much more warm. It’s phenomenal how if you change it to a blue or to a cold color, it does feel colder. And in this car, because it is not the most efficient thing in the world, actually, if you can trick yourself into thinking that you’re warmer than you are, that is going to save you some miles on your range. So, a nice little bonus there. Not necessarily how they intended it to be used. Now, the other thing here is that the sound system is absolutely fantastic. This has a Burmester 3D surround system. It sounds brilliant. When we drove to Cornwall, we were listening to Journey through Time to the series on the Guy Forks incident. Fun fact for you, Guy Forks chose a fake name, John Johnson. What a ridiculous fake name. However, the sound system was brilliant and we were totally absorbed in that story and that is just precisely what you want for those long journeys. Really, really crisp, deep, beautiful sound. There is also this trackpad which means that you can control all of the menu features from within here. I personally really like that and especially because when you’re sat here, you can just scroll through the menu. It’s quite intuitive. It’s very responsive. I find it really annoying when you constantly have to prod a screen and sort of move forwards. It’s a first world problem, but again, if you’re spending £175,000, I don’t think it’s too much to ask for. If you go into the Mercedes EQ function here, you can see your charging information. Obviously, that’s fairly standard, but you can also get your range information. And by pressing a number of different buttons, you can see what you can do to increase your range. Again, this is a useful feature because the range on this isn’t so brilliant. We will come to that. But by seeing what would happen if you turn off, you know, your heated or cooled seats or whatever, you can see how many more miles you get. And by pressing that button, you can turn on maximizing that range, which is a really nice feature if you’re starting to get into that slightly squeaky bum time of feeling a little bit nervous. It also tells you your consumption, which is again really useful information for two reasons. Firstly, it displays it in what hours per miles. I prefer it in miles per kilowatt hour, which means that I’m constantly doing maths. So, you know, good for the mental stimulation, but it is also quite depressing information on there because you see just how inefficient this car is. And particularly on a day like today where it is 4° C, we’re getting like 640 W hours per mile, which is not brilliant. Someone else is going to do the math and we’ll have it as a little display on the lower third to show you what that means in miles per kilowatt hour. Now, of course, I love the design of this. It’s an icon for a reason. I can’t tell you why I like this big boxy brick shape. I can’t tell you why I like to be sat so high up and in that really commanding driving position, but I do guilty. I really, really do. And that is complemented so well by just the things that make this feel slightly more mechanical, including the door. My word, the clunk of those doors and pressing the button in. It is worth it just for the doors. Things I do not love. First of all, getting in and out. I don’t know why, but this is impossible to make elegant. And I’ll just show you because you end up needing to clamber onto the seat, needing to do something sort of slightly strange with your feet. I’m looking for a handle here, and there isn’t one. And I’m not even sure that that would help me either. Not sure what the solution is, but definitely getting in and out. I feel like a bit of a wally. Second thing I don’t love, leg room. Rear leg room. Where on earth is it? So, the seat admittedly is not in my driving position. It is in videographers Andy’s position. He is 6’2. He’s nodding. He’s 6’2. So, fairly, you know, pretty average height. And this is where the seat is. The effect of that is that first of all, this screen is extremely confronting. And second of all, I just feel very upright and very cramped. It is also a very dark interior in here. The This is not a particularly panoramic sunroof. It ends just ahead of the driver. So, this feels dark and it feels rather oppressive. The seats are not even that comfy. And I just think if you’ve got teenagers or indeed children over the age of 10, it’s not the one. Now, things I do not love also include the range. Now, this is over 3,000 kilos. It is so heavy. And unsurprisingly, it has an enormous battery, 116 kW hours of usable capacity, no less. And that, according to WLTP, will give you 284 miles of range. But honestly, I just don’t know if I believe that. So, last week when I was in Cornwall, it was 14 degrees C and at 100% that was giving me 211 miles of range. I didn’t have it in any kind of sporty mode. It was in comfort mode. But even when I went to look at what we could do to extend the range, it was only giving us marginal gains, maybe like 20 miles or so. Today, it is 4° and when I charged at 50% it said that I had 100 miles. So, frankly, that is just a really, really inefficient. Today, we’re getting 1.64 miles per kilowatt hour. Um, but also it just means that charging this is really expensive. And it’s curious because it doesn’t sound like anything kind of north of 250 mi would give you substantially more than say something with 250 mi of range. But I think psychologically you do have to stop substantially less. is just so much more capable for those super long journeys, which obviously driving to Cornwall is 100% one of those. So, it’s expensive. The range is not good. It is inefficient. Negative points for that, I have to say. The other thing that is fairly maddening, and it’s only maddening because this vehicle is so expensive, so you expect a really, really extreme quality, is the fact you have to manually fold the seats. And if you compare that to other vehicles that are on the market for substantially less money, that is not the case. And because this vehicle is so big, in order to manually fold down those seats, you’re really having to stretch into the car. And it just has this ability to cheapen the experience. And you do need to fold down the seats because the boot space, whilst very tall, is not particularly wide, not particularly practical. So you are very dependent on folding these seats flat to get everything you need in from a week away. to fold them flat. These need to come out, which is fine. Oh. Oh, no. How did I do this before? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I think they have to tip them forward. How did I do this? I think this is user error, not not car error now. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Oh, hang on. Oh, there’s a tag. Oh, there we go. [Music] That’s one. Take this out. Pop that there. What? Oh no. See, what do I do with these? Oh dear. There you go. Seamless. In some cars where you pay substantial less money, you just press a button. You don’t have to do any of this, Gubbins. So, negative points for that. Now, there are things that I do like about the drive. So, for example, uh the ADAS features are brilliant. The adaptive cruise control, lane keep assist, all brilliant. And even the ability to turn them off is very intuitive. So, for example, the speed limit little noise that it makes. You can turn that off by just holding down the volume down button, which I think is just a very intuitive things to do. And it’s also like a bit like saying, “Shh, stop bothering me.” Um, so I like that. Plus points for that. There is also this kind of gentle rumble and roaring which isn’t too obstructive. I like that noise when you turn on the G roar however which is sort of simulating engine noise. Less of a fan of that. It just seems a bit gimmicky to me. But whilst we’re on the subject of noise, this is a big blocky brick. It is difficult to deal with any kind of aerodynamic whatever going on and it does generate a lot of wind noise which I can hear in my right ear here. It would be brilliant if there was some kind of acoustic, I don’t know, dampening, some acoustic glass, something that could mask that wind noise because we’re only going 37 miles per hour. And even under 30 mph, you can hear that wind noise. There is no question whatsoever that this is extremely capable and proficient off-road. Just read any of the reviews that describe how it just shrugged, looked at the mountain, and said, “Yeah, I can do that. No problem.” And I did try, or rather I didn’t try, my husband tried the G turn, the tank turn, and I have never been so mortified in my entire life. It is such an antisocial thing to have done in a car park, and I can never return to that car park ever again. However, we did do it, and it was fun. But when it comes to driving on country roads like we’re doing today, I have to admit it’s making me feel a bit queasy. It’s not exactly stiff as a drive, but it is just giving you this kind of rocking and rumble that’s a bit like, and if you sat in the back, I’m sure that experience would be even worse. Now, on the motorway, absolutely fine. I didn’t experience any kind of motion sickness at all. But this is a car that should be enjoyed in the countryside. And right now, not really enjoying that. Um, and especially because it is big and it does take up so much room. Which leads me to the biggest clanger of things on my negative list. And that is is that if you drive this car, you have to be prepared for people to hate you. They look at you like they are just willing you to apologize for taking up all of that room for that excess. They want you to apologize for raising the local house prices because you own inevitably a second home. It is not the kind of attention that you actually want to garner. [Music] So, if we assume that we are all guilty in search of a big car, what else might be in our hypothetical shopping baskets? Well, I guess it depends what you’re after. If, for example, it’s tank turns, then maybe you’d also be considering the Hummer or the R1S or even the Yang Wang U8, although granted that last one is of course a range extended electric vehicle. in which case for this you’re spending about £50,000 more all in order to get the history of the G-Class and the legacy of the Mercedes brand. If indeed it is in fact fancy pants pure excess that you’re after then maybe you’d be considering considering an electric Mayback or indeed a Lucid Air Sapphire. Again, in that instance you’ll be paying a similar price but getting less range. Then of course there’s versatility in which case you’d probably also be considering the highendai Ionic 9 or the Kia EV9 in which case with this you’re spending more than double to get 100 miles fewer range per charge and more grumbles about rear legroom. But of course buying a car is never a completely rational purchase and your decision always comes down to where you want to sit on that fanciness versus efficiency scale. And efficiency of course that’s dependent on what that means to you. be it in the traditional sense of miles per kilowatt hour or how efficiently you can pack everything that you need to to get into the car. And in that instance, for me, this car would sit bottom right and the Kia EV9 would sit top left. Despite everything that I may have said about this car, I still love it. I still don’t want to give it back tomorrow. But the problem is is that I just can’t imagine actually parting with your real life money in order to own it. And that is a problem that I’ve tried to rationalize with a van diagram naturally. Now, the thing is with your OG-Class drivers, they’re all about the roar of the V8 engine. Something that, you know, a synthetic G- Raw sound system just simply isn’t going to be a suitable substitute for. They’re around the status, the symbol that these cars represent. They are a totally irrational purchase. And meanwhile, your luxury EV driver is all around range, quick charging, an 800vt architecture around versatility, that deep, deep daily practicality that probably prioritizes space over exuberant utility. And the space in between these two groups, this overlap in the vend diagram, is where the G-Class, the electric G-Class, exists. the space where the most excessive EV tech exists, where there’s a weird amount of tank turns and also the Pope mobile 2. Now, even though the electric version of this G-Class offers a greater waiting depth than its internal combustion engine counterpart, it also offers greater control because of the quad motors versus the three mechanical locking differentials. It’s still going to always be perceived as a compromise. lower clearance, smaller boot, no towing, no towing, and simply speaking, you’re not going to win the EV argument with compromises. And at the same time, it won’t pull over the EV luxury or the luxury EV loving people, myself included, because it simply lacks that day-to-day versatility that you get when you have an EV native architecture. because no amount of tank turns or tantalizing party tricks is going to make up for a sub 250 mi range when you’ve paid that amount of money. And so without some kind of radical rethink of the marketing strategy or a bespoke EV architecture, this space in the vin diagram is going to remain small. And so what it ends up doing is proving yes that Mercedes can electrify their most iconic model. But it’s not for the EV driver or the EV curious. is for the people who want the most technologically advanced cars purely to say that they can. And that there is my problem with it. Let us know what you think in the comments. Please do like and subscribe and if you have been, thank you for watching. Now visit electric vehicles.expert expert where you can follow everything electric and keep current with clean technica, the driven electric and many
The all-electric Mercedes G580 (Electric G-Class) is a sight to behold — but is this legendary icon actually a terrible EV? After a full week and 750 miles of real-world testing, Imogen delves into its huge battery, low efficiency, limited range, lack of towing, tight interior space, and sky-high £175k price tag.
Yet despite its shortfalls, something about it is alarmingly tempting. This episode breaks down why the Electric G-Class may struggle to satisfy both EV buyers and G-Wagen purists. The question is, is it worth it, or just a beautifully luxurious guilty pleasure?!
00:00 A total flop but a guilty pleasure
01:00 Ad Break – come to our live show!
01:23 46 years of history and the perfect villain car
02:16 G580 with EQ Technology & the Popemobile
03:14 Around 750 miles of thoughts
03:46 Interior & some surprise and delight features
07:14 Winning back some range
08:23 A big blocky icon?!
08:55 Things NOT to love – rear leg room
10:11 Range and inefficiency?!
11:38 First world problems – folding seats
12:19 Faffing
13:42 Safety features & noise
14:48 The G-Turn Tank Turn & motion sickness?!
15:42 The Big Clanger
16:30 What else could you buy?! Fanciness vs Efficiency
17:59 Rationalising my G-Wagen love with a Venn Diagram…
19:05 A bunch of compromises?!
19:53 Not for the EV driver?!
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