Is the electric Mercedes G-Wagen better than the petrol-powered version?

Who, a decade ago, could have imagined that the G-Wagen would be reborn as a silent, battery powered statement of the future? Who, back then, would also have wagered a pint on the idea of zero alcohol Guinness? And yet here we are, in this strange new world where both are not just possible, but potentially profitable. 

As the times are a-changin’, I thought I’d embrace both, via the means of a roadtrip.

The plan, in the very loosest sense, was to start at St James’s Gate, Dublin – home of the black stuff – load an inappropriate amount of Guinness 0.0 into an appropriately coloured Mercedes-Benz G580 with EQ Technology (the electric G-Wagen to you and me) then head to the most remote pubs the northwest of the Emerald Isle has to offer. But first, I had to get there from London – an adventure in itself. 

Photography: Mark Riccioni

Rolling out of the Top Gear car park, it took less than a mile before a kid, clacking away on a hacked Lime bike, screwed up his face and asked, “Yoooo, is that electric?” I nodded. “Like... fully electric?” As the slightly embarrassing hum of the synthesised ‘G Roar’ whirred away at the lights, I nodded again. “That’s mad!” I wasn’t sure if he was excited or disappointed. But he’s not wrong – it kind of is mad.

See, we’ve been led down a path of electric cars to ease the burden on Earth’s resources, and the prevailing mantra is about efficiency. So sandwiching a double stacked 124kWh battery in a ladder frame chassis, slathering it with a 26mm torsion resistant case that weighs 58kg (so battery liquid doesn’t burst out everywhere if you clock a boulder), and putting on it an exterior that has the aero profile of communist housing adds up to a monstrous 3,180kg kerbweight. That’s nearly half a tonne more than the other G-Classes. Mad.

It also doesn’t add up to efficiency. On the way up to the ferry in north Wales I averaged 1.5mpkWh, meaning I had to fill up about every 170 miles. On a bank holiday. Using the motorway network. Which meant it was slow and expensive (£100 for a full charge) and the sort of experience that tests not just patience, but the limits of the human spirit. And with ZapMap telling me there aren’t too many chargers in the extremities of Ireland, range anxiety is very real.

But one swift, smooth and sunny ferry crossing later, photographer Mark Riccioni and I arrive in Dublin and head straight to the iconic black gate where Arthur Guinness signed a Dragons’ Den worthy 9,000 year lease in 1759. And here, with tourists crawling around the car to take pictures, you can see the G’s wonderful duality of design in action. It just works everywhere – on these cobbled streets as horseshoes and carts clop along, as well as in the depths of the Darién Gap... if there’s the charging network to get there.

But this G is subtly softer than before as – don’t laugh – Mercedes has made considerations for aero. Really. The edges have been sanded smooth, there’s a raised bonnet, mini spoilers around the A-pillar, as well as a new slot in the rear wheelarch to clean up the airflow. It also wears a cute little backpack like Dora the Explorer. No spare in there – just storage for the charge cable. Or, in our case, eight cans of Guinness 0.0. So yeah, no spare on a car that weighs over three tonnes and is about to go off road. Puncture anxiety, meet range anxiety on the growing list of automotive neuroses.

I decide to toast our voyage with a pint of the booze free black stuff, which due to some cold filtration trickery, tastes almost, but not quite, like real Guinness. But here’s the real win: as there’s more alcohol in a ripe banana, I can drink and drive while also seeing if this new Geländewagen is still a proper Geländewagen. Genius. So I will legally, liberally and repeatedly down pints en route, at every scenic spot, charging post and pub we pass.

We hit the road west, into the pale gold light of late afternoon. Settling into a cruise, you instantly feel the benefits of the electrified drivetrain: quietness and smoothness. The only sound being wind whipping around the wing mirrors and the splatting of flies against the upright letterbox windscreen. The interior is naturally luxurious – a far cry from the military vehicles where it all began. With cool blue infused carbon fibre, kaleidoscopic downlighting, twin 12.3in screens and haptic buttons that are fiddly and sometimes non-responsive, it’s definitely more Beverly Hills than Bundeswehr – but supremely comfortable. Too comfortable. So after a quick ’leccy top-up (and a 0.0 pint at Sean’s Bar, the oldest pub in Ireland) it’s time to go off road.

Ben Bulben stands proud of the landscape overlooking the Atlantic from the Dartry Mountains – a stunning, shell-like mountain, it’s a topographical wonder with poetry literally in its soil. Yeats is buried here. But its bog lined tracks are where I first get to push some buttons and finally play with the G’s off road modes.

If you bring up the ‘off road cockpit’ you get all the relevant functions – tyre pressures, inclination, compass, torque to wheel – and a camera based ‘transparent’ bonnet so you can see which rocks you’re about to scrape over on the TFT screen. Off road cruise control? That’s here too. As I point it at some ruts and muddy tracks, the G580 cracks its knuckles and engages its four motors.

Each motor, located just inboard from the wheel, delivers 145bhp (579bhp total) and a combined 858lb ft of torque. Instantly. And with millimetric precision. This means traction. Lots of it. Wherever you are. Even on standard road tyres.

Better than that, each motor drives through its own reduction gear, and has a further low range gear, making crawling easier. With all this tech I may as well point the three pointed star to the top of the mountain and let the Mercedes take the strain as the torque vectoring juggles power any which way while replicating diff locks.

We climb up and crest over to look at Sligo – home to three fifths of Westlife – and I laugh at how utterly effortless it all was. But then I spot our first major watering hole in the distance, three miles across the water on Coney Island. No, not that one.

The way the G tackles the terrain is comical – it just shrugs and goes

We wake early – because we have to. See, to get to the pub, we need the scary and devastatingly dangerous currents of Sligo bay to subside. When they do, a causeway marked by 14 stone pillars is revealed and we can reach Coney Island.

Not wanting to get caught out, and having a wading depth of 850mm, I decide to cross early. Possibly too early as the G belly flops into the salt water and water tidal waves across the bonnet. On the other side is Marie McGowan – the last full time resident on the island who also doubles up as the landlady of its only pub, MJ Ward’s.

“I can’t believe you made it,” she says with a warm smile. We sit and chat over a morning pint of 0.0 – which, given it’s available in 1,700 pubs in Ireland, has been adopted nationally with open arms. And unlike EVs, alcohol free stout isn’t incentivised – yet sales have risen by nearly 50 per cent year on year. Imagine if EVs had that kind of uptake.

With places to be, we wave goodbye by showing off the G-Wagen’s social media friendly party tricks. Like G-Steer, which lets the car turn within its own wheelbase – apparently for technical tight ‘Oh hell we can’t cross that’ moments off road. Though I – and probably you – would rather reverse given the shocking rate it spins you around.

But what really draws a crowd is G-Turn. It brakes the inside rear wheel while powering the outside to create a wild pivot. On soft sand, it’s like a steering wheel actuated handbrake. The more you turn, the tighter you corner. It also works as a drift stick, kicking the car into oversteer and, with instant torque, nearly 600bhp and 0–62mph coming in 4.7 seconds it’s a proper laugh.

We rejoin the mainland and cling onto the Wild Atlantic Way passing holy wells, crumbling abbeys, and pubs that haven’t changed their carpets since the invention of penicillin. 

Knowing our next stop is our Carrowteige, we try to fast charge en route. But can’t. A Dacia Spring is already there drinking the juice, so I’m left topping up at 7kW. Which, when your battery is the size of the G’s, is like filling up a swimming pool with a pipette.

With no time to wait, some rudimentary man maths and a stubborn belief in Eco mode, we decide to pray and press on past peat bogs and bedraggled sheep, to Connolly’s Pub in County Mayo. Perched on the edge of a precipitous cliff, it overlooks Broadhaven bay – where land and sea fold into one another in staggering shades of green, blue and granite. Another pint. This one served with boxty – devilishly moreish potato pancakes. There are scones too, still warm, made by Lorraine Connolly and her sister – the latest in the family who’ve kept the pub going through storms, recessions and generations of sodden fishermen needing hot tea and cold Guinness.

The scenery is overwhelming – hard for your eyes and brain to fully absorb. Especially as the sun is out, which is rarer than a solar eclipse here. But we must keep going, heading south along fast, flowing roads where the G’s heffalump status starts to show. 

With coil springs and adaptive dampers, the G580 never quite escapes the burden of its own weight when you push on. It porpoises, and sometimes gets lost in its own suspension stroke and rebound. So I dial it into Sport mode – sharpening things up by reducing travel but making comfort suffer. But it’s the braking where you really feel the mass. Luckily, paddles on the wheel let you increase or decrease motor regen, which helps take the burden off the brakes. There’s no denying it’s quick. Properly quick. But quick at a cost as brakes start to fade and range starts to plummet. So we stop again. In Westport. Another pint. But it’s no bad thing killing time as it means the setting sun will cast golden light as we cross the mountains and roll into Connemara. 

Connemara doesn’t just offer a landscape – it offers moods, tempers, scenes. It’s accessible and almost indecent in its variety – you drive through bits that look like the Highlands, then Canada, the topography of the Lake District, with a sprinkling of Scandinavia. 

I stop. And have another pint. I drink it slowly, letting the moment soak in as I look out at the epic vista. The refreshing gasp after a great day – this is what life, and adventure, is for. Especially when I know there’s a charger at our final destination.

We wash up on the beach at the Connemara Bay Hotel. It doesn’t look like much from the outside, but inside, it’s all warmth and wonder – with an outlook like a Turner sketch and the freshest seafood you could ask for. Plus 22kWh charging. But the best is yet to come.

The next morning, we watch the sun rise on a slipway in the idyllic fishing village of Cleggan and feed the G onto an open mouthed ferry. It’s the start of the most surreal commute I’ve ever had. It’s just a four wheeled white box and a handful of sheep, sailing to Inishbofin – a rugged jewel of history and wildness, and home to the most westerly pub off the coast of Europe.

It’s burdened by weight and always shadowed by electric infrastructure that more often than not overpromises and underdelivers

As we pass Cromwell’s Barracks – a weather beaten fort that’s crumbling into the sea – it feels like entering a bonus level in a videogame. The sea is Seychelles blue, the sand is white as flour... the island roads vanish almost immediately. This is what the G was built for – exploration off road.

With its upright seating position, wing top indicators, short wheelbase and slab sides, it’s surprisingly easy to place – even on rutted tracks that barely exist. The way the G tackles the terrain is comical – it just shrugs and goes. I watch French ramblers haul their flapjack laden rucksacks up steep hills with sticks and boots, while I cruise past in leather lined electric silence. I offer them a few cans of the zero alcohol stuff. A peace offering that’s gratefully received.

The capability of the G’s motors never fails to impress. Plus, I learn it can also hang sideways up to 35°. And the articulation is something shocking as we venture across a crevasse, with one wheel tucking tightly into the arch while the other dangles at full droop. It’s odd in moments like this as the G is doing deeply mechanical things, yet it’s entirely digital. Your brain gets tricked into thinking it’s analogue, when it’s not. And where most EVs are devices – soulless – the electric G still has purpose and soul. But now it’s clever with it. It uses its tech to elevate what it already knows how to do. There are still quirks. For instance, I don’t understand how Katy Perry has gone to space before the G gets soft close doors.

We make it to Murray’s Doonmore Hotel and Bar, where the glassy blue shallows darken into the unknowable navy of the Atlantic. Beyond it – nothing but cod, fog, and Newfoundland. This is Ireland at full volume, all in, showing us what it’s got. So I think about a proper, boozy Guinness to punctuate the trip and reflect and draw some parallels. 

See, it’s clever, Guinness 0.0. Innovative, yes. But better? No. It’s like the car that brought me here. The G580 with EQ Technology. It does some things its ICE siblings can’t – but it’s burdened by weight and always shadowed by electric infrastructure that more often than not overpromises and underdelivers.

Guinness 0.0 is brewed the same way as the real thing. So is the G. But both don’t quite taste or feel the same, they don’t hit quite the same spot. They’re not replacements, but additions. They’re both more expensive to make than the real thing (the G is £180k) but there’s a market. It’s an undeniable feat that Mercedes has seen the evolution of the Geländewagen from a machine of war and repurposed it for peace and progress. It takes you places more quietly and more effectively than ever before. But only if you’ve got a plug nearby. So if you want a real adventure wagon to go off road, unfortunately, you’re still going to need a nozzle and a pump. And a proper pint at the end of the day. Cheers to that.

Thanks to Tourism Ireland – for more inspiration and to plan your own trip check out Ireland.com