Photo: Mark Jones
Our test car in Edition One guise looked awesome in Manufaktur South Sea Blue Magno paintwork, but the big questions are: how does it drive in a road test? Can it really go off-road? How much fuel does it use? How fast is it? The short answers are: okay, you bet, none, and very.
Running on 20” AMG 10-spoke alloy wheels and being aerodynamically shaped like a 3 085kg brick, which it is, with a substantial ride height, the on-road handling and feel of the Mercedes-Benz G580 is perhaps as you would expect. It’s not made for the track or mountain pass breakfast runs; this G-Wagon wants to go to the coffee shop on a Sunday morning.
Off-road pedigree
Off-road is where it will surprise you most. I honestly think this G580 will go almost anywhere a Toyota Land Cruiser can go. And for a premium Mercedes-Benz riding on road tyres, that’s saying a lot. It will at least go as far up the side of a mountain as any normal human would want to take a vehicle that doesn’t have a Toyota badge on the front.
The G580 is a purely electric vehicle, powered by a 116kWh battery that drives four individually controlled electric motors, each positioned close to the wheels and integrated into the ladder frame chassis. Each motor delivers 108kW of power and 291Nm of torque, which adds up to a total of 432kW and 1 164Nm, for those who don’t want to do the maths.
Think of any serious off-road bits, and the G580 has them, too, albeit in an easy-to-use virtual format. This means that instead of mechanical diff locks and low-range transfer cases, the G580 uses torque vectoring to get into and out of any trouble when you’re out bundu bashing by precisely metering torque to each wheel.
Very quick for a brick
With all this power and torque comes speed. It hit 100km/h in the claimed 4,7 seconds and reached its electronic speed limiter of 180km/h after just 400m of tar during our high-performance test. Sure, the 500kg lighter AMG G63, with 430kW and 850Nm, gets to 100km/h a whisker quicker at 4,4 seconds and doesn’t stop until it hits its limiter of 240km/h, but where the G580 can’t be beaten is when it comes to ‘fuelling’.
I know you won’t care when you are spending R4,6 million on an SUV, but for what it’s worth, we consumed 33,5kWh of electricity for every 100km travelled. That translates to around R135 of electricity for my house, or roughly 6ℓ of fuel per 100km. This is entry-level hatch territory, whereas the AMG G63 drank the rest at 17,5ℓ/100km.
You can forget the claimed range figures; I saw a range of 404km when fully charged, and this dropped to a more realistic 350km average thanks to also always dropping the hammer. The vehicle has a maximum charging capacity of 11kW for AC charging at home and up to 200kW for public rapid charging. In the case of the latter, the charging time from 10% to 80% is only around 32 minutes, which is more than good for any electric vehicle.
What’s the verdict?
The G580 is no AMG G63, but it’s still such a blast to drive like a hooligan, and with a feature called G-ROAR, which pipes the V8 engine soundtrack into the vehicle, you can almost fool yourself into thinking you are driving a G63.
Oh, and if you like murdering tyres, the G580’s best party trick is the G-TURN, letting you spin the vehicle around in circles like a tank. The G63 can’t do that.
Vehicle Fast Facts
Model: Mercedes-Benz G580 Edition One
Powertrain: Quad electric motors
Transmission: Two-speed automatic
Power: 432kW
Torque: 1 164Nm
Power consumption (tested): 30,3kWh/100km
Range (tested): 346km
Licensing mass: 3 085kg
Price: R4 647 456
