SHARP Drives: 2025 Mercedes-Benz G 580 Is an Unstoppable Off-Road EV

Matt Bubbers May 15, 2024

The first electric G-Wagon can move in ways no other vehicle can. Or, at least no other vehicle this side of a tank. We drove the first ever battery-powered G-Wagon in France and wow; forget what you know about off-roading, 4x4s, and SUVs. The electric G-Wagon hits so different.

2025 Mercedes-Benz G 580 With EQ Technology

We should say right off the bat that it’s not officially called the electric G-Wagon, nor is it called the Mercedes-EQG as all the concepts were. Sadly, the powers that be at Mercedes have decided to call this the — wump wump — the 2025 Mercedes-Benz G 580 with EQ Technology. The name goes over like lead balloon, but it doesn’t matter because everyone is going to call it the electric G-Wagon.

The 2025 Mercedes-Benz G 580 Moves Like a Tank

You won’t be thinking about Mercedes’ unusual naming conventions though when you see what this truck can do.

It feels like a cheat-code, pressing the right sequence of buttons and levers will put the G-Wagon into G-Turn mode. Tell your passengers to hang on tight, grip the steering wheel firmly with both hands, hit the throttle and the car begins to spin like a dreidel spun by some great cosmic force. It goes around and around through 720-degrees in a perfect pirouette before coming to a halt. Try it for the first time and we guarantee you’ll laugh out loud. You’ve never felt anything like this in a car before.

Input another cheat-code sequence of buttons on the dashboard and the G-Wagon goes into G-Steering mode. This one’s even better. It’s like rodeo for cars. Turn the steering to full lock, right or left, and this gargantuan truck suddenly starts to do a perfectly computer-controlled drift in slow-motion. Press the accelerator harder and it drifts faster. Unwind the steering a little and it stops drifting but continues to turn normally. Unlike G-Turn mode, this feature could actually be useful if you ever find yourself stuck off-road facing an impossibly tight turn. Forget throwing it into reverse and backing up and going forward and reverse… No. Using G-Steering, the truck pivots around the driver as if by magic. (Both of the special G-tricks are for off-road use only, but… well, yeah.)

What Magic Is This?

It’s not really magic, although it feels like it. It’s actually just a lot of sleepless nights, unprintable German expletives, mud, sweat, and tears from the engineers at Mercedes-Benz who worked to electrify the G-Wagon.

It wasn’t an easy project. After all, a high-tech battery-powered version of the world’s most iconic, old-school SUV is a concept as incongruous as a cheap Rolex, or diet Pizza. It sounds wrong, impossible — perhaps even heretical — and yet here we are in the south of France absolutely thrashing the first electric G-Wagon up a wet hillside, careening over jagged rocks, crashing through ponds and doing 720-degree pirouettes in a muddy field.

Over-Engineered Like Nothing Else

This has to be the most absurdly over-engineered vehicle we’ve ever driven. It has four individually-controlled electric motors, one for each wheel, and four two-speed gearboxes with low- and high-range. (G-Turn mode works by spinning the wheels on the left and right sides of the car in opposite directions.)

To protect the battery from diehard off-roaders who’ll scrape this thing across jagged rocks, the engineers developed an underbody armour plate to protect the battery. The armour is 26 millimetres thick, attached to the ladder frame with more than 50 steel fasteners, and weighs 127 pounds. It’s made of a secret mix of carbon fibre and other materials. If it were made of steel, a comparable armour plate would be nearly 400lbs. Yikes.

Anything the gas-guzzling G-Class can do, the electric one can do better. It can wade through deeper water — up to 850 millimetres — because electric motors don’t breathe air. In France, we drove this thing through thick brown water that covered the wheels. The battery, motors and electronics were entirely submerged and yet the wheels kept spinning, we remained totally dry, and eventually made it back to muddy land.

Mercedes could’ve simply made an EV that looks like a G-Wagon, but they didn’t do that. That would’ve been too easy. The electric G-Wagon still has the ladder frame and solid rear axle of the gas-burning version. It still drives like a G-Wagon, with that glorious view through the flat slabs of glass that pass as windows.

What About Driving Range & Power?

Look, with a design that resembles a garden shed if you squint, the electric G-Wagon was never going to be an ultra-aerodynamic long-range wizard was it? Nor does it need to be. Mercedes has other EVs for long-range. Anyone who can purchase one of these things has plenty of other cars and SUVs in the garage for long road trips.

With a 116 kWh battery, driving range is rated at 473 kilometres on the overly-generous European WLTP test. EPA and NRCan figures have yet to be released. A DC fast charging capacity of up to 200 kW means the battery can charge from 10 to 80 percent in roughly half an hour in ideal conditions.

The four electric motors produce a combined maximum output of 579 hp and 859 lb-ft of torque. Thanks to the nature of electric motors, they’re even more responsive than the mighty V8 in the revised AMG G 63. In fact, we’d go so far as to say the electric G-Wagon is the best one in the model’s 45-year history, because in addition to everything else, this one doesn’t come with any gas-guzzling guilt.

The electric G-Wagon should be in Canadian dealerships later this year, and we’d bet there’s already a long wait list for what will likely be the hottest status-SUV of 2024.