Mercedes-Benz G580: ‘Bad’ is having your fingers broken by a torturer’s hammer – this car is way worse
Unless you are a young Arab gentleman who wants a plaything in the desert, this car is hopeless, and far too expensive. But it does have a neat party trick.
When it became clear that cars with proper engines would soon be discarded and replaced with electric alternatives, carmakers responded by not being very imaginative. They figured that when someone bought “a car”, they’d want it to look, feel and drive like “a car”. So they simply took out the conventional engine and replaced it with batteries and a motor.
But for me, this didn’t really work. Because taking the engine out of a car is like taking the soul out of a human being. We are told, as AI begins to blossom, that this is possible and maybe even desirable – but could you fall in love with an AI person? I’m not sure you could. Because you’d always know.
When you get into a current EV, it has a steering wheel and pedals and a heater and windows, but you know, as you drive along, that it’s not real. The car pictured here even provides an artificial soundtrack, so it sounds as if there’s a real engine under the bonnet. But you know there isn’t.
I think of electric cars in the same way I think of a vegetarian sausage. It looks like a sausage; it may even taste like a sausage. But there’s no pig meat in there, so it isn’t a sausage. Far better, if you become a vegetablist, to let go of the past. Don’t try and make your food like meat. Experiment with weeds and seeds and see where you end up.
It seems to me this is what is now happening in the world of electric cars. People are beginning to realise that if you don’t need an engine, you don’t need a gearbox either. And that frees you up to go bonkers. I read recently of a new Chinese SUV that can be driven into a river, where it lifts its wheels into the wheel arches and floats. And in America, there’s a new Amazon-backed company called Slate that is set to launch a back-to-basics electric truck called, simply, Truck. Priced at just $US27,000, you can remove the SUV body and make it a two-seater pick-up. It isn’t even painted, and your phone is the dash. It seems to me that by being not very clever, it’s very clever indeed. Here we have a company that has realised electric cars can (and should) be very cheap.
Even Mercedes is waking up to the idea that an EV doesn’t need to drive like a proper car, which is why its new G-wagen, the G580, can be made to whizz round and round on the spot. Seriously, you can make the wheels on one side of the car turn forwards and those on the other side go backwards.
Of course, it would be illegal in Britain to do this on a public road. In fact, you are advised not to do it on any kind of tarmac – you need to be off-road. But even here there are problems because the function isn’t available if there is any kind of gradient or rut. If you’ve gone up a track, then, and found your path blocked and need to turn around in a tight spot, forget it.
The only environment where you could use the facility would be in a field in dead-flat Lincolnshire. And why would you want to spin around in a Lincolnshire field? No idea. Especially as the process is not simple. You have to engage “Rock” mode, which means moving a lever and confirming this on the central screen. And you have to be in low range, which means moving a knob, putting the “gearbox” in neutral and then moving the knob again. And on and on it goes.
A more useful feature enables you to make just one back wheel spin backwards when you’re in a tricky spot. This is equally difficult to engage but it does give you a very tight turning circle.
These things are possible because this G-wagen has four electric motors – one for each wheel. Mercedes has realised that when you have this level of control, you can cock about. This is the Germans having fun.
It’s the same story with the charging cable. This is housed on the rear tailgate in what’s supposed to look like a spare wheel cover. But it’s so thin and weedy that actually it looks like a Ninja Turtle backpack. This is also the Germans having fun.
The batteries? Well, they’re all located in the chassis, which means they have to be heavily protected from possible damage when you are off-road. This is the Germans not having fun.
I’m told the torque you get from the power plant is so immense that it is a truly incredible performer off-road. I didn’t have any challenging slopes on the farm, so I couldn’t verify this. On the road, however, I can report that things are less rosy. So “less rosy”, in fact, that after three days I parked the G580 in my drive and never used it again. Yes, all the power in the world, blah blah, and yes, commanding driving position, blah blah, you look like Rommel if he’d been a drug dealer, and all the usual G-wagen observations. But the ride? Bad doesn’t even begin to cover it. “Bad” is having your fingers broken by a torturer’s hammer. This is way worse.
I think the main problem is that with all the batteries, the G580 weighs just over 3.25 tonnes. And propping all that up is like asking your knees to prop you up when you weigh 130kg. They won’t.
I have a trapped nerve in my back at the moment. It’s fine if I’m not doing anything, but in the G580, not doing anything is impossible because it pitches and yaws and rolls all the time, and you never have any idea what it’s going to do next. So you can’t ever brace yourself. Getting out of this and back into Lisa’s Range Rover was like getting out of an economy seat on a new airline called Air Turbulent and into a bed at the world’s most peaceful hotel.
So no. Unless you are a young Arab gentleman who wants a plaything in the desert, the electric G-wagen is hopeless, and far too expensive. But with its fancy wheel-rotation tricks, I see it as a pointer. It shows that in future, instead of becoming a vegan sausage, a pale and insipid interpretation of what’s gone before, the electric car could well become a gadget. Not just a means of getting about (which is where we are at now) but a snazzy and amusing way of getting about. By going round and round in circles.
Daft? Well, yes, but not as daft as the currency converter that doubles up as a motorised tin opener. And you bought one of those, didn’t you?
Jeremy’s rating: 3/5
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