Mercedes' Electric G-Class Is Ridiculous On Paper, But What About In The Real World?

When I said yes to testing the all-electric Mercedes-Benz G 580, I did so pretty enthusiastically. I expected it to be exceedingly competent and lavish — sounds like a fun way to spend a week if you ask me — but I also figured the EV would compromise on some of the purity of the experience provided by the gas-powered model. 

I've tested gas-powered G-Class SUVs (also known as G-Wagens) in the past, which similarly offered an upscale driving experience and unshakable confidence on the toughest terrain. Those experiences are what gave me so much confidence in the G-Wagen, no matter what was powering it, but I didn't expect the G 580 would have so much charm.

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Like its gas-powered counterparts, the G 580 is built with luxury and off-road capability in mind, and it succeeds at supplying both in abundance. But this big, boxy EV delivered on all the same promises of the gas G-Wagen and delivered on a few of its own. It gave me a sense of silent opulence to go along with the old-school styling, without any sort of reduction in quality. Like any version of the G-Wagen, the G 580 made all this opulence available at a pretty high price. And there are a few compromises to make if you want to use it as a regular daily-driven SUV, but there's an argument that it's worth the price, and the small sacrifices made along the way.

Off-road parks are generally filled with all sorts of sounds and smells that become familiar over time. Here in Southern California, those sounds generally include the thumping of dirt bikes, or the whirring of large fans doing their best to cool down Pentastar V6s. The smells that greet you include campfires, various grilled meats, and hot two-stroke oil. You don't get any of those recognizable alerts to your senses when you take the G 580 off-road — and that's one of the most important places I took it. 

Like other all-electric off-roaders, and all-electric SUVs of the on-road type, the G 580 is effectively silent when it's underway. At first, I missed a bit of the theatre that's typically present during my desert adventures, but I settled right into the no-noise approach after just a few minutes. Bashing over rocky trails, cruising over flat dirt sections at speed, and crawling over particularly tough obstacles — all done in silence — was easy work for the G-Wagen.

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It wasn't just good at the serious stuff, either. The G 580 had a bit of whimsy when I turned off the traction control and went heavy on the throttle. It was hilariously easy to get sideways on slippery terrain, and it felt like a tall-roofed rally car when I did. With the massive amount of torque on tap, I had to be careful just how much throttle I applied in certain scenarios, but I never felt like the Falken Azenis fitted to the G-Wagen were far from regaining control.

More than capable with its precise quad-motor setup — one motor for each wheel — the G 580 makes off-roading easy and comfortable. Big bounces become small; little bumps become practically imperceptible. When I was done spending a few hours in my local off-road park, I went through the mental Rolodex of every off-roader I'd taken there in recent years — virtually none of them could compare to how comfortable and easy to wheel the electric G-Wagen was. There's also a long list of features that make off-roading the G 580 even easier than expected.

The off-road cockpit pages, which only take one dashboard-mounted button to locate, bring up specs like tire pressure, torque output, and direction of travel via a compass. The G-Wagen's screen is one of the easiest to see in any modern vehicle, with sharp graphics and excellent contrast. The same screen can be used to show what's underneath your hood via a "transparent hood" display, keeping you from high-centering the G-Wagen on pointy objects. That was a big concern for me, doing my best not to scrape up a six-figure SUV that wasn't mine.

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Crawl control can be used to maintain an even speed on level ground, creeping over obstacles without scraping the underside, even though the G 580's specs show just how unlikely a scrape is. It has 9.8 inches of ground clearance, more than enough to clear just about any small obstacle.

Then, there are features like G-Turn, the hilarious rotation instigator. Want to be facing the other direction, but don't feel like doing a three-point turn? No problem. Select G-Turn and the G 580 can spin the right and left wheels in opposite directions, kicking up a swirl of dirt and dust, blasting past your desired 180-degree turn, going a full 720 degrees if you allow it to do so.

Silently powering the G 580 is a 117 kWh battery, sending juice to four individual electric motors, putting out a combined 579 horsepower and 859 pound-feet of torque. No wonder it could get sideways so easily. That's good enough to take this heavy EV from zero to 60 mph in just 4.6 seconds. It's a bit unexpected to get that sort of thrust in something as large and boxy as the G-Wagon, but it's fun nonetheless.

The standard gas-powered G 550 takes 5.3 seconds to reach the 60 mph mark, and the electric G 580 is only slightly outmatched in the sprint to 60 by the AMG G 63, which does it in 4.2 seconds. Against its conventionally-powered variants, it's fast, and even by modern sports car standards the electric G-Wagen is pretty swift. It's not unique in the way it accelerates — like most other EVs it has gobs of thrust off the line, silently passing basically anyone around, and without offending the sensitive ears of bystanders — but it's faster than it looks.

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The G-Wagen's weight (which we'll touch on more in a bit) does hold it back, however, keeping it from feeling even remotely agile. It doesn't move quickly through corners, even if it does feel composed as it's going along. The weight also makes the brakes feel a bit overwhelmed if you try to drive it at speed for any significant amount of time. The brakes heat up quickly, and during my test, they felt a bit underpowered when I'd try to bring the G-Wagen to an abrupt stop.

With its large and imposing exterior, you'd be forgiven for thinking the G-Wagen is a spacious, family hauling SUV. It isn't. This is something the all-electric G-Wagen shares with its gas-powered siblings. Up front, there's not much space between the driver and passenger. There's enough legroom and headroom up front for adults, but only if you adjust the seats relatively far back. If you've done that, then the second row legroom becomes pretty tight — I wouldn't want to sit back there behind a tall adult for very long.

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Thankfully, the front seats were excellent. The padding provided a near-perfect balance of support and firmness, with the welcome addition of heating, ventilation, and massage all raising the bar for on- and off-road comfort. The upholstery was soft to the touch, with arrow-straight stitching on all the surfaces, and every bit of the interior you'd regularly come in contact with felt decidedly premium.

Much in the same way it performed admirably off-road, the G-Wagen's adaptive suspension was strong enough to control body motion on-road without feeling stiff. The tires' large sidewalls absorbed the little stuff, and the suspension did the rest. 

As mentioned earlier, the G-Wagen's screen was super easy to see and read at a moment's glance. Technically, the boxy Merc uses two 12.3-inch displays: one for the driver as a digital gauge cluster, and the other for the center touchscreen. Both were great; I didn't have any problems with usability, responsiveness, or inputs during my test. The Burmester 3D audio system was a high point, too, with impressive sound quality from the 18 speakers placed throughout the cabin. 

The heated and cooled cupholders ostensibly maintain the proper temperature of your beverages, a pretty luxurious feature, but I didn't have the opportunity to test it out with my oversized water bottle or my insulated coffee container.

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Where I did run into a few issues, however, was with the G-Wagen's various driver aids. Adaptive cruise control, for example, had trouble with keeping distances consistent, and with knowing when to brake. Once, when the system was engaged, traffic slowed in front of me and the big Benz hit the brakes hard, lighting up the emergency brake warning. For the remainder of my test, I didn't really trust the adaptive cruise control, so I turned it off, and did all the throttle controls myself. That's a pretty annoying change to make in stop-and-go LA traffic.

When the gas-powered versions of a vehicle are rated by the EPA at 15 and 18 mpg combined, it's pretty logical to expect that the EV version won't exactly be a hyper-miling machine. And that's the case with the G 580. It shares the same boxy shape with its gas-powered siblings, so it's not very slippery in the air, plus it's heavy. Like, really heavy.

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Depending on trim level and various options, the G 580 weighs somewhere between 6,700 and 6,900 lbs. That's more than most full-size-truck-based SUVs and enough to bring the G 580's energy usage up to a hefty 54 kWh/100 miles. 

The weight and underwhelming efficiency meant regular trips to the public charging station during my test of the G 580, especially since the EPA rates the G 580 at just 239 miles of total range. At my local 350 kW charging station, I made up most of my range in about 30 minutes, but I had to make multiple trips there in just one week.

I'd love to have the G 580 as a daily driver. It's unassailable over the worst pavement you'll find in pretty much any city around the world. It's also nearly impossible to flummox in tough off-road conditions. I could drive it with total disregard for potholes during the week, and go exploring over and around mountains on the weekends. It was compelling from the moment I started it up until the moment I dropped it off to return it to the Mercedes folks, even with its practicality and efficiency flaws. With all that capability and luxury, though, the price got pretty high.

The standard G 580 starts at over $160,000, with options on my test vehicle taking it to nearly $180,000. Get a little click-happy with the Mercedes configurator and that number can balloon to $200,000. For significantly less money, you can get just about any trim level you want of the rugged and capable Rivian R1S; for buyers who aren't looking for the all-electric off-road experience, there are properly luxurious off-roaders like the Land Rover Defender that are available for about half the price. 

If you've got the money to spend, the Mercedes-Benz G 580 is an amazing way to travel, but you'll have to pass up a lot of value from other brands on your way to signing on the dotted line. You've got to want one — and I badly want one.