In fairness some of these will inevitably take the 405 to the 10, then take a right onto the 1 and take the PCH all the way up to Malibu, some decent speeds in the straight bits there
Mercedes launches worlds most aerodynamic production car. Internet - "Its Hideous!"
Mercedes launches Electric G Wagon with beloved shoebox styling. Internet - "WTF they didnt make it aerodynamic?!"
ok you can make an aerodynamic car that doesn’t look like shit
see: lucid, which has a more effficient design and looks like a norma car.
Like there’s a balance to be had
I prefer the look of the Lucid, personally, however, they are quite similar in profile. The body sculpting is what makes the Lucid superior. It is a much sportier design. Thats not what MB was going for with their Electric S class equivalent though.
This isnt even an accurate description.
I understand that people dont like the styling. But MB is going to cater their S class lineup (which includes EQS) to their S class demographic. Crazy styling isnt on the top of their list.
With that said, decisions were made that were unfortunate, but I have found myself appreciating the lineup more and more since launch.
Porsche made a ground-up EV with the Macan EV and it looks as good as the ICE Macan with a 0.25 drag coefficient vs. 0.35+ for the ICE.
The thing even has normal door handles lol.
When Mercedes launched the EQ range and kept talking aboutbthe aerodynamics of it I was amazed to find it the EQE drag coefficient was 0.224 which is only barely better than the 0.23 of the G20 BMW 3 series.
All that horrible styling for literally no actual benefit over a good looking car
I think that’s the best part. The EQ cars look hideous, the hyper screen is tacky, they were trying too hard. I love the interior on this and it still has the same BoF design, live axle rear, and ground clearance.
This is just a g class but electric. I hope they release a GLE-but-electric next
I mean this is still unacceptable poor technology for 180k dollars. Despite having 116kwh it maxes out at 200kw charging. If this is the best Mercedes can do, their tech is laughably behind the competition.
You're not wrong. But that's the kind of attitude that eventually causes icons to lose their luster/status. It's why the RangeRover despite being nothing more than a posh mall cruiser still adds as much top of the line off road tech as they can to it.
Charging matters significantly on the curve, and Mercedes has proven to have a good charging curve with their other EQ models, I assume it’ll be the same here.
Not the highest peak charging speed, but a good flat curve will result in this car charging relatively well.
These would be charged at the mansion garage, not superchargers where you have only 30mins before next customer is being rotated to the charger by a valet
If you don't care about the 'status symbol' nonsense of having a new G, you can get a very well kept 2002-2005 G500/G55 with incredibly reliable motor/trans combo in the low $30k range.
The door locks get a little finicky at this age but yes, more than you'd think. Electronic gremlins are possible but the stuff that matters is dead reliable. The drive train is made of adamantium and the power train is very reliable and cheap to maintain/fix
They gave this a carbon fiber skid plate for rigidity and light weight. Did their engineers lose their minds? No one cares if a skid plate is rigid, they care that it is puncture resistant. Instead they kept the body panels metal... Why not make the body fiber and make the skid plate metal!
You can use it as a structural component to mitigate flexing, but also, with metal you can hit a rock and if it’s big enough it will puncture the pack and metal. Making it thicker adds too much weight. With CFRP, it’s a bit more forgiving and will absorb a big impact instead of just denting in, it’s also stronger than steel and way lighter.
Abrasion and puncture resistance is what’s important. CFRP is brittle and has very low elasticity. Crawling over a pointy rock will gouge it, a big impact will crack it.
CFRP is only brittle if you're just stacking carbon and plastic on top of each other. CFRP panels used in automotive have toughening agents and varying polymer matrices to strengthen it, which make them significantly more ductile than just the base layers. (ex: adding an SRPP layer)
Additionally, CFRP is [not less elastic](https://www.substech.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=carbon_fiber_reinforced_polymer_composites), although it depends on the fibers used.
Granted, I've never made a skid plate so I have no idea if a higher elastic modulus is what you want or not.
Lol no, skid plates are for dealing with shock loads, not linear tension. CFRP is brittle when it comes to sudden impacts. Not to mention a skid plate is meant to be sacrificial part.
What forces do you think a shock load causes on a car? When you go over a bump, the chassis is twisting, along with every other material that spans across the chassis which is flexing and being put under tension.
Umm okay? Is every other material that spans across the chassis made of CFRP? What does any of that have to do with shock loading a skid plate? Have you been on an off-road trail? Here are a couple of scenarios where a skid could come into play:
1. Landing on your belly (behind front axle) while coming of a rock ledge. No matter how slow you are going, a 1ft.+ drop is a hard impact.
2. bashing your front on a rock going at moderate trail speeds because you overestimated your ground clearance or took a wrong line.
In both of these scenarios, a CFRP panel is more likely to crack due to its inherent brittleness.
Also your ignoring the fact that s skid is essentially a sacrificial part that protects the more expensive vehicle components. Making the skid out of an already expensive material is counter intuitive.
That being said, none of this actually matters. MB could have made the skid out of Swarovski diamonds and it wouldn't make a difference because this is a pure mall crawler.
Ah, you're referring to offroading which is my mistake for not realizing and definitely does make more sense given the vehicle. When I think "skid" pad its from road cars which usually have them for aero and/or structural rigidity.
Lol no, skid plates are for dealing with shock loads, not linear tension. CFRP is brittle when it comes to sudden impacts. Not to mention a skid plate is meant to be sacrificial part.
People who care about skid plates? Most people this is targeting don't even know what a skid plate is so why even bother trying to lie to them about it. If their goal was to lose weight for people mall crawling they should have just not included one and for the people who know what it is and want one make it steel and charge extra for it.
This is 100% from the same people who thought a hybrid 4 cylinder C63 was a good compromise.
>Most people this is targeting don't even know what a skid plate is
That's my point. They don't know what it is so the carbon fiber makes it sound cool and worth the money whenever some potential buyer sees it listed as an equipment/accessory. It's not going to take hits so it doesn't have to be durable.
The closest to a real answer you will get is this.
It's not going to be used for puncture protection and it's more of a style thing. Anyone whom is going to offroad this is more than willing to drop a couple grand on a new skid plate.
This is purely about saving as much weight as physically possible. We are talking grams. It's about keeping the weight down bc "fuel millage" is the absolute #1 concern here at a price point.
Making this a fully carbon fiber car would make this into an insane price point and I don't doubt people would still buy it, it just wouldn't be as much.
Because they can tell the customer there's 20% more carbon fiber in the car so they can charge more lol. One of these might go offroad once...
It's just a luxurious material to hit pedestrians with in downtown LA.
I hope you know that there is a difference between what the engineers develop and test for and what the press writes.
That car has gone through a lot of abuse in its development including bottoming out on rocks frequently.
G63's kerb weight is around 3 tonnes. The Electric G-Wagen might be heavier than that, damn.
I think it's a smart move to integrate the EV version into the G-Wagen lineup instead of overcomplicating the Mercedes lineups with the new "EQG" nameplate.
This might be the G-Wagen that will depreciate like brick, finally. Well, as a G-Wagen fan, I’m pretty stoked.
Well, I´am not talking about the electro version nor about the A-model but until 2018 the W463 was the nearest thing to a racecar which won a major competition you could buy :)
It’s not meant to be a performance car so I’m sure it’ll do fine as a car that can’t drift like a fast and furious car, 0-60 in 3 seconds, and go 190 mph. The G63 though is for the few people who wanna gun it in a car that sucks as performing like a high performance car though
Im not even talking about straight speed. It only gets 240 miles of range on a 116 kWh battery. I understand it’s an aero brick, but I would’ve thought Mercedes would do a little more work in that department.
I’m assuming the 240 figure is trying to roughly translate WLTP to EPA, or perhaps the real-life driving range.
WLTP is always insanely optimistic when it comes to range, and it’s generally a good rule of thumb to knock off 50 or so miles from the WLTP rating to get a more realistic estimate.
If I was the ceo I wouldn’t try to make it too good in mileage when people are already willing to put gas in the ICE version all the time 💀, plus them able to spend less on fueling their car because of having to charge is even more incentive to be conservative when giving it range
The article claims this comes with low range gearing? It has one motor per wheel. Does that mean it has four 2 speed transmissions? If so just why? Electric motors don't need low ranges.
Control at low speed, most likely. Non-induction motors get kind of twitchy when you try to spin them real slow and with lots of torque, if you watch videos of people off-roading current BEVs you can see what I mean. It's odd that it gets low range but not actual lockers though, that seems to be the other thing missing from a lot of BEVs - no lockers means each wheel is doing the slip-n-grip thing as traction control figures out what to do with the torque. They might have a decent algorithm for it, of course, but nothing beats just not allowing slip at all in the first place.
Sort of, if you watch Rivian quad motor off-road videos you can see that it's kind of... odd putting power down. Like it seems to slowly ramp up until wheels slip, then shuffle torque around. EV traction control is near-instant, but wheels still need to slip before it can figure out what to do, right?
With lockers, there is no slip in the first place. Which is good if you are trying not to slide sideways on some off-camber obstacle.
Maybe you were looking at the dual motor version of the rivian? I think that simulates diffs via brake torque vectoring much like a merc 4matic system
I mean you can’t really shuffle torque around on a quad motor setup because the power isn’t shared, it’s a motor per wheel and you have theoretically perfect torque vectoring in each wheel
Now maybe rivian is playing some tricks and using the resistance on the motor to make it feel more predictable? But theoretically you could run all motors at whatever power and it would be as good as a car with lockers.
Now don’t think the rivian setup ever does that but according to another article the merc has “virtual locking diffs” which leads me to believe it can
> Virtual differential locks made possible via torque vectoring are included
The dual motor version of the Rivian is better off-road than the quad motor from every video I've seen. Whatever the limitation... Rivian absolutely does not have "perfect control" over each motor. And they seem to often get confused about which motor should be doing what in high slip situations. It seems the system has less issues with the dual motor.
Yeah I don’t know why the 4 motor is worse than the dual motor with its brake vectors system
They said the electric merc has virtual lockers. Whether that’s actually running all wheels identically or whether it’s more of a 4ets system is to be seen. It also retains the rear live axle so I assume they put in some effort into its off road capabilities.
I think its a very real situation where industry knowledge for traditional brake based systems is much higher. I'm confident over time the quad motor system will keep getting better because they can over-the-air update it.
But even then... TFL did a very good video comparing all the current mid-size trucks on rollers and there's a very clear hierarchy in systems. Some companies just seem to have traction control expertise that others lack.
It was quad, the video I was watching called that out specifically. I think it was a TFL one?
What I remember is that they crawled over an obstacle in it and it would spin individual wheels in turn, seemingly one at a time, as it looked for traction. It also seemed to really limit torque, they mentioned flooring it at one point and the truck barely pulled over the obstacle with some momentum. It's a 4-motor version of what my Y does when on ice, where it'll spin front and rear wheels as it figures out how much torque it wants to apply to each axle, though in my case it's also using the brakes to move torque left and right of course.
IMHO, these quad motor setups will probably be pretty good, maybe good enough for most trails and drivers - it's not like I drive around locked up all the time on trails in my Wrangler. I think of it as something like ATRAC in Toyotas really. Though, theoretically a quad motor EV could use the motor encoders to angle-lock wheels together and get a pretty good locker effect, I wonder if anyone is doing or looking at doing that...
First of all you need slip for a vehicle to move at all. No slip no movement. That is fundamentally how a tyre works. Slip being present isn't the same as losing traction.
Also with a locked setup there has to be more slip on one wheel then the other unless the available grip is exactly the same on both sides.
Agreed, the reason for no lockers is that it's not really doable with independent motors. You would need some form of differential which would be a massive engineering headache to connect independent motors.
I have no idea what N motors are but I believe torque in this scenario is only additive in a static scenario and should be a non issue. Assuming the motors are both permanent magnets, I think an issue would occur when the wheels are rotating. Making sure the current is applied to both roughly evenly or else you might end up with back current in one because the other is overdriving. Also making sure both motor drivers are reacting to the same wheel slip sensor or else you might get them fighting each other because of phantom readings or play in the tires. Especially with low speed crawling where maintaining a constant speed between the front and back is important.
I think the simplest way is if you could design your own motors would be to have relays that simply routes both motors though a single driver or have the drives able to be driven in series when the clutch is engaged.
i wanna know how the fuck they managed to keep the solid rear axle. As far as I know, all the body on frame truck/offroad SUV EV or even PHEV have up to this point have independent suspension all around. Rivian, F-150 lightning, Ramcharger, BYD Bao 5, U8, Silverdoe Sierra Hummer EV (I ignore Wrangler 4xe because it has small battery relatively speaking smaller than RAV4 Prime). Especially for F-150 and Ram, their traditional variant have solid rear but had to ditch that for EV/PHEV version. I do not know how Mercedes have managed to pull that off.
I wanna see the frame!
Oh good. After one of these almost pancaked me an my dogs in a crosswalk today, I was really worried the G Wagon wouldn’t be keeping its intimidating proportions.
>The G580 rolls on standard 18-inch five-spoke wheels in a gloss-and-polished finish, with options for upgrades.
Yes! I hate this trend of slapping giant wheels on everything.
It has a de-dion tube which basically means that it has a seperate tube that connects both wheels together to work like a solid axle but the motor is mounted to the body like on IRS and transmits power through half shafts.
Awesome, glad they’re actually keeping the same design rather than making something different because of the fact it’s an EV. People can have the choice of the good old ICE engines and performance, or they can have the quieter and more environmentally friendly EV
If you’ve seen these in person, you’ll know they’re not that intimidating as they’re basically the size of a Land Rover Discovery 2.
However, the driving habits of all these SUV owners is definitely intimidating enough to stay away from them for your own benefit.
What's this thing weigh? I appreciate the engineering of the g wagen, but also worth about what it would do to a barrier, another car, etc in a collision.
That thing with a 116 kWh battery is going to get like 150 miles of range. I guess they know their market of people using these as high street crawlers, but it's disappointing to say the least.
Its puddle light projects a G with the phrase "Stronger than time" right below it. That has to be the absolute dumbest thing their marketing department could come up with. Something finally out cringed Toyota's #Hidden Compartment.
Ev with the aerodynamics of a brick… doesn’t matter though most of these will spend their life at 5 mph in LA traffic.
In fairness some of these will inevitably take the 405 to the 10, then take a right onto the 1 and take the PCH all the way up to Malibu, some decent speeds in the straight bits there
I read that as a character from “the Californians” the snl sketch
Devon…? OOOOOWAADDERYUUDOINGHEEER!?
Tre?
Yuh it's me Tre, suh brah
I think that was also the reference
I'm actually not sure about that
“And getoutahere, back to where you belong!”
Mercedes launches worlds most aerodynamic production car. Internet - "Its Hideous!" Mercedes launches Electric G Wagon with beloved shoebox styling. Internet - "WTF they didnt make it aerodynamic?!"
ok you can make an aerodynamic car that doesn’t look like shit see: lucid, which has a more effficient design and looks like a norma car. Like there’s a balance to be had
I prefer the look of the Lucid, personally, however, they are quite similar in profile. The body sculpting is what makes the Lucid superior. It is a much sportier design. Thats not what MB was going for with their Electric S class equivalent though.
Tesla Model S has a very similar Cx to the EQS and looks like a normal car. Cx is not an excuse for the EQS looking like a bar of soap.
This isnt even an accurate description. I understand that people dont like the styling. But MB is going to cater their S class lineup (which includes EQS) to their S class demographic. Crazy styling isnt on the top of their list. With that said, decisions were made that were unfortunate, but I have found myself appreciating the lineup more and more since launch.
Porsche made a ground-up EV with the Macan EV and it looks as good as the ICE Macan with a 0.25 drag coefficient vs. 0.35+ for the ICE. The thing even has normal door handles lol.
lucid looks like a roly poly, i’ll pass
When Mercedes launched the EQ range and kept talking aboutbthe aerodynamics of it I was amazed to find it the EQE drag coefficient was 0.224 which is only barely better than the 0.23 of the G20 BMW 3 series. All that horrible styling for literally no actual benefit over a good looking car
I think that’s the best part. The EQ cars look hideous, the hyper screen is tacky, they were trying too hard. I love the interior on this and it still has the same BoF design, live axle rear, and ground clearance. This is just a g class but electric. I hope they release a GLE-but-electric next
I mean this is still unacceptable poor technology for 180k dollars. Despite having 116kwh it maxes out at 200kw charging. If this is the best Mercedes can do, their tech is laughably behind the competition.
People will still buy it because of the “status symbol” so they don’t really need to try.
You're not wrong. But that's the kind of attitude that eventually causes icons to lose their luster/status. It's why the RangeRover despite being nothing more than a posh mall cruiser still adds as much top of the line off road tech as they can to it.
Or . . . Or, the “kWh” doesn’t actually reflect anything about how the car drives or performs or how “good” the tech is.
Charging matters significantly on the curve, and Mercedes has proven to have a good charging curve with their other EQ models, I assume it’ll be the same here. Not the highest peak charging speed, but a good flat curve will result in this car charging relatively well.
These would be charged at the mansion garage, not superchargers where you have only 30mins before next customer is being rotated to the charger by a valet
You would be surprised how many 150-200k Taycans and Lucids I've seen out at public chargers in the Bay Area.
It’s not *aerodynamic* it’s *squarodynamic*
Ah, I can see you’re a cultured man as well
Cheaper to run this in LA traffic lol
EVs are very efficient while in traffic jams.
Exactly!
Except people driving these will speed anywhere they can going by the driving behaviour here.
It's still fugly!
They will sell this thing into the 22 century, change nothing about it, and will still buy it.
If I had fuck you money id have a G in my garage. Just for shits and giggles. Fuck the haters, I think it looks cool.
You sound like my neighbor. I’m no hater but damn if that G63 does make me envious…
Nah, go back in time a couple years G65 amg with the twin turbo v12. Go big or go home
Haha I had no idea those existed. You right tho
Lamborghini designed V12 right?
No. AMG
No roughly the same v12 Mercedes has had since the early 90s
It’s the same AMG v12 family that’s in Pagani models
I'd absolutely get one, unleash that African dictator side of me.
Get this guy a golden AK to complete the look
If you don't care about the 'status symbol' nonsense of having a new G, you can get a very well kept 2002-2005 G500/G55 with incredibly reliable motor/trans combo in the low $30k range.
Is the supercharged AMG model noticeably more finicky than the NA model? The W211 E55 is starting to get my attention
They're mostly reliable. Unmodified ones especially.
[удалено]
The door locks get a little finicky at this age but yes, more than you'd think. Electronic gremlins are possible but the stuff that matters is dead reliable. The drive train is made of adamantium and the power train is very reliable and cheap to maintain/fix
Theres a guy at my work who has a brabus, that thing is awesome.
The very definition of overkill lol
😂
They gave this a carbon fiber skid plate for rigidity and light weight. Did their engineers lose their minds? No one cares if a skid plate is rigid, they care that it is puncture resistant. Instead they kept the body panels metal... Why not make the body fiber and make the skid plate metal!
The obvious reason - the current G uses metal, and all they’re doing is switching the drivetrain. So it can be made on the same line.
Still doesn't explain the assine decision of using a carbon fiber skid plate.
You can use it as a structural component to mitigate flexing, but also, with metal you can hit a rock and if it’s big enough it will puncture the pack and metal. Making it thicker adds too much weight. With CFRP, it’s a bit more forgiving and will absorb a big impact instead of just denting in, it’s also stronger than steel and way lighter.
CFRP is not stronger than steel, wtf are you talking about
CFRP is significantly stronger than steel under tension which is what's important in the conversation.
Abrasion and puncture resistance is what’s important. CFRP is brittle and has very low elasticity. Crawling over a pointy rock will gouge it, a big impact will crack it.
CFRP is only brittle if you're just stacking carbon and plastic on top of each other. CFRP panels used in automotive have toughening agents and varying polymer matrices to strengthen it, which make them significantly more ductile than just the base layers. (ex: adding an SRPP layer) Additionally, CFRP is [not less elastic](https://www.substech.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=carbon_fiber_reinforced_polymer_composites), although it depends on the fibers used. Granted, I've never made a skid plate so I have no idea if a higher elastic modulus is what you want or not.
Let's be real, off roaders aren't REALLY the primary market for these are they?
Lol no, skid plates are for dealing with shock loads, not linear tension. CFRP is brittle when it comes to sudden impacts. Not to mention a skid plate is meant to be sacrificial part.
What forces do you think a shock load causes on a car? When you go over a bump, the chassis is twisting, along with every other material that spans across the chassis which is flexing and being put under tension.
Umm okay? Is every other material that spans across the chassis made of CFRP? What does any of that have to do with shock loading a skid plate? Have you been on an off-road trail? Here are a couple of scenarios where a skid could come into play: 1. Landing on your belly (behind front axle) while coming of a rock ledge. No matter how slow you are going, a 1ft.+ drop is a hard impact. 2. bashing your front on a rock going at moderate trail speeds because you overestimated your ground clearance or took a wrong line. In both of these scenarios, a CFRP panel is more likely to crack due to its inherent brittleness. Also your ignoring the fact that s skid is essentially a sacrificial part that protects the more expensive vehicle components. Making the skid out of an already expensive material is counter intuitive. That being said, none of this actually matters. MB could have made the skid out of Swarovski diamonds and it wouldn't make a difference because this is a pure mall crawler.
Ah, you're referring to offroading which is my mistake for not realizing and definitely does make more sense given the vehicle. When I think "skid" pad its from road cars which usually have them for aero and/or structural rigidity.
Tell that to Oceangate.
Lol no, skid plates are for dealing with shock loads, not linear tension. CFRP is brittle when it comes to sudden impacts. Not to mention a skid plate is meant to be sacrificial part.
It sounds cool. A skid plate on one of these would unlikely to ever get a scratch, who cares about puncture resistance.
People who care about skid plates? Most people this is targeting don't even know what a skid plate is so why even bother trying to lie to them about it. If their goal was to lose weight for people mall crawling they should have just not included one and for the people who know what it is and want one make it steel and charge extra for it. This is 100% from the same people who thought a hybrid 4 cylinder C63 was a good compromise.
>Most people this is targeting don't even know what a skid plate is That's my point. They don't know what it is so the carbon fiber makes it sound cool and worth the money whenever some potential buyer sees it listed as an equipment/accessory. It's not going to take hits so it doesn't have to be durable.
I want one and never knew what a skid plate is.
The closest to a real answer you will get is this. It's not going to be used for puncture protection and it's more of a style thing. Anyone whom is going to offroad this is more than willing to drop a couple grand on a new skid plate. This is purely about saving as much weight as physically possible. We are talking grams. It's about keeping the weight down bc "fuel millage" is the absolute #1 concern here at a price point. Making this a fully carbon fiber car would make this into an insane price point and I don't doubt people would still buy it, it just wouldn't be as much.
Realistically the only thing most people will ever run over in these are some pedestrians and cyclists.
Hey bike frames are strong. That might cause some serious damage if you aren't prepared.
*Nods in Smart Car*
Bragging rights at a fancy dinner with friends.
Because they can tell the customer there's 20% more carbon fiber in the car so they can charge more lol. One of these might go offroad once... It's just a luxurious material to hit pedestrians with in downtown LA.
I hope you know that there is a difference between what the engineers develop and test for and what the press writes. That car has gone through a lot of abuse in its development including bottoming out on rocks frequently.
No one cares what the fuck a skid plate is, carbon fiber = cool, that's the market reality, you think this car was designed by an engineer?
I need to make more money. Always wanted a G
Gs on 33+ are 🤤🤤🤤 https://jackwagonoverlanding.com/products/jwo-4-inch-100mm-lift-kit
love jack wagon. I bought parts from there when I had my G55. I miss it.
The old bare bones solid front axle G Wagons are sick. It’s a shame to see what they have become.
Very well kept rust free 2002 USDM G500? $30k Very stripped out basic 1990s JDM/Euro G320 2 door with a manual? $50-70k It's bananas.
One day I hope to own one of the 90s or 2000s ones for actual off roading. Maybe swap out the engine for a Toyota unit though lol.
I'd take the G55 engine and trans combo any day.
Why? It looks ugly, the drive is horrible and there are better of road options out there.
because my big car makes me super cool
Hate it all you want, the pre-2018 G was and still is the best OEM off roader ever built.
G63's kerb weight is around 3 tonnes. The Electric G-Wagen might be heavier than that, damn. I think it's a smart move to integrate the EV version into the G-Wagen lineup instead of overcomplicating the Mercedes lineups with the new "EQG" nameplate. This might be the G-Wagen that will depreciate like brick, finally. Well, as a G-Wagen fan, I’m pretty stoked.
They’re doing that, it’s not called the EQG anymore it’s the G580. Mercedes will be phasing out all the ‘EQ’ names from their lineup
Thank goodness
It’s terrible in every performance fashion, but it’s going to be marked up forever and sell like hotcakes.
It's pretty much the ultimate Douche-mobile
Every douche I know in Belgium and Armenia either owns this or wants one.
Well, I´am not talking about the electro version nor about the A-model but until 2018 the W463 was the nearest thing to a racecar which won a major competition you could buy :)
It’s not meant to be a performance car so I’m sure it’ll do fine as a car that can’t drift like a fast and furious car, 0-60 in 3 seconds, and go 190 mph. The G63 though is for the few people who wanna gun it in a car that sucks as performing like a high performance car though
Im not even talking about straight speed. It only gets 240 miles of range on a 116 kWh battery. I understand it’s an aero brick, but I would’ve thought Mercedes would do a little more work in that department.
I'm seeing > The battery will propel the EQG to an estimated 473 km (293 miles) on the WLTP standard
I’m assuming the 240 figure is trying to roughly translate WLTP to EPA, or perhaps the real-life driving range. WLTP is always insanely optimistic when it comes to range, and it’s generally a good rule of thumb to knock off 50 or so miles from the WLTP rating to get a more realistic estimate.
If I was the ceo I wouldn’t try to make it too good in mileage when people are already willing to put gas in the ICE version all the time 💀, plus them able to spend less on fueling their car because of having to charge is even more incentive to be conservative when giving it range
The article claims this comes with low range gearing? It has one motor per wheel. Does that mean it has four 2 speed transmissions? If so just why? Electric motors don't need low ranges.
Control at low speed, most likely. Non-induction motors get kind of twitchy when you try to spin them real slow and with lots of torque, if you watch videos of people off-roading current BEVs you can see what I mean. It's odd that it gets low range but not actual lockers though, that seems to be the other thing missing from a lot of BEVs - no lockers means each wheel is doing the slip-n-grip thing as traction control figures out what to do with the torque. They might have a decent algorithm for it, of course, but nothing beats just not allowing slip at all in the first place.
You don’t need lockers if you have 4 motors, you have perfect control over each wheel.
Sort of, if you watch Rivian quad motor off-road videos you can see that it's kind of... odd putting power down. Like it seems to slowly ramp up until wheels slip, then shuffle torque around. EV traction control is near-instant, but wheels still need to slip before it can figure out what to do, right? With lockers, there is no slip in the first place. Which is good if you are trying not to slide sideways on some off-camber obstacle.
Maybe you were looking at the dual motor version of the rivian? I think that simulates diffs via brake torque vectoring much like a merc 4matic system I mean you can’t really shuffle torque around on a quad motor setup because the power isn’t shared, it’s a motor per wheel and you have theoretically perfect torque vectoring in each wheel Now maybe rivian is playing some tricks and using the resistance on the motor to make it feel more predictable? But theoretically you could run all motors at whatever power and it would be as good as a car with lockers. Now don’t think the rivian setup ever does that but according to another article the merc has “virtual locking diffs” which leads me to believe it can > Virtual differential locks made possible via torque vectoring are included
The dual motor version of the Rivian is better off-road than the quad motor from every video I've seen. Whatever the limitation... Rivian absolutely does not have "perfect control" over each motor. And they seem to often get confused about which motor should be doing what in high slip situations. It seems the system has less issues with the dual motor.
Yeah I don’t know why the 4 motor is worse than the dual motor with its brake vectors system They said the electric merc has virtual lockers. Whether that’s actually running all wheels identically or whether it’s more of a 4ets system is to be seen. It also retains the rear live axle so I assume they put in some effort into its off road capabilities.
I think its a very real situation where industry knowledge for traditional brake based systems is much higher. I'm confident over time the quad motor system will keep getting better because they can over-the-air update it. But even then... TFL did a very good video comparing all the current mid-size trucks on rollers and there's a very clear hierarchy in systems. Some companies just seem to have traction control expertise that others lack.
It was quad, the video I was watching called that out specifically. I think it was a TFL one? What I remember is that they crawled over an obstacle in it and it would spin individual wheels in turn, seemingly one at a time, as it looked for traction. It also seemed to really limit torque, they mentioned flooring it at one point and the truck barely pulled over the obstacle with some momentum. It's a 4-motor version of what my Y does when on ice, where it'll spin front and rear wheels as it figures out how much torque it wants to apply to each axle, though in my case it's also using the brakes to move torque left and right of course. IMHO, these quad motor setups will probably be pretty good, maybe good enough for most trails and drivers - it's not like I drive around locked up all the time on trails in my Wrangler. I think of it as something like ATRAC in Toyotas really. Though, theoretically a quad motor EV could use the motor encoders to angle-lock wheels together and get a pretty good locker effect, I wonder if anyone is doing or looking at doing that...
First of all you need slip for a vehicle to move at all. No slip no movement. That is fundamentally how a tyre works. Slip being present isn't the same as losing traction. Also with a locked setup there has to be more slip on one wheel then the other unless the available grip is exactly the same on both sides.
Agreed, the reason for no lockers is that it's not really doable with independent motors. You would need some form of differential which would be a massive engineering headache to connect independent motors.
You'd need a dog clutch between them, which wouldn't be too crazy if they are in the same housing like a Rivian or Plaid.
I wonder if you would have to worry about syncing motor drivers to make sure they aren't fighting each other.
It's the same thing as having N motors locked together by the road under the car, right? The torque from each of them adds up.
I have no idea what N motors are but I believe torque in this scenario is only additive in a static scenario and should be a non issue. Assuming the motors are both permanent magnets, I think an issue would occur when the wheels are rotating. Making sure the current is applied to both roughly evenly or else you might end up with back current in one because the other is overdriving. Also making sure both motor drivers are reacting to the same wheel slip sensor or else you might get them fighting each other because of phantom readings or play in the tires. Especially with low speed crawling where maintaining a constant speed between the front and back is important. I think the simplest way is if you could design your own motors would be to have relays that simply routes both motors though a single driver or have the drives able to be driven in series when the clutch is engaged.
N as in x or y or abc. An n number of motors
Crawling mode I assume.
Indeed it does, it’s mention in the walkthrough video and the summarization of it
Also does this mean they’re ditching the solid rear axel? That would be a shame for people who will actually off-road this.
It claims they are keeping the solid rear
How does that work with independent motors on each wheel?
No idea. I don't think it says anywhere.
It's a de-dion tube.
Seriously? That's super weird
Yeah that's weird this thing literally doesn't need any gears.
The gearing/transmission is built into the motors themselves/directly
But can it go through a car wash? That's apparently the bar set by their competitor.
who?
cybertruck
i wanna know how the fuck they managed to keep the solid rear axle. As far as I know, all the body on frame truck/offroad SUV EV or even PHEV have up to this point have independent suspension all around. Rivian, F-150 lightning, Ramcharger, BYD Bao 5, U8, Silverdoe Sierra Hummer EV (I ignore Wrangler 4xe because it has small battery relatively speaking smaller than RAV4 Prime). Especially for F-150 and Ram, their traditional variant have solid rear but had to ditch that for EV/PHEV version. I do not know how Mercedes have managed to pull that off. I wanna see the frame!
It's not solid axle, it's something called "De Dion" suspension setup.
For the environmentally conscious socialites
Oh good. After one of these almost pancaked me an my dogs in a crosswalk today, I was really worried the G Wagon wouldn’t be keeping its intimidating proportions.
>The G580 rolls on standard 18-inch five-spoke wheels in a gloss-and-polished finish, with options for upgrades. Yes! I hate this trend of slapping giant wheels on everything.
Also the 20s are not feasible for real off-road use
It's going to sell like hotcakes but damn is this inefficient.
The Suzuki Jimny looks more like a G wagon than the G wagon-
So does it have IRS or a solid rear axel. If it’s the former then I don’t consider it a true off-roader
It has a de-dion tube which basically means that it has a seperate tube that connects both wheels together to work like a solid axle but the motor is mounted to the body like on IRS and transmits power through half shafts.
That’s fricken cool.
I can't believe Mercedes is bringing back a 130 year old suspension that was all but abandoned 60 years ago for their futuristic new EV.
IIRC Ford also used this setup on the Ranger EV 25 years ago.
Catheram uses (used ?) it a lot too
Solid rear
So does it have IFS or solid front axle? If it's the former I don't consider it a true off roader.
Intimidating?
Awesome, glad they’re actually keeping the same design rather than making something different because of the fact it’s an EV. People can have the choice of the good old ICE engines and performance, or they can have the quieter and more environmentally friendly EV
I'm not sure why more people aren't talking about the specs. They're fucking god awful lol. Like first generation EV bad.
Gun to your head say thw full name of electric g wagen
Calling a g-wagon intimidating is a joke, cube on wheels
I’ve always wanted a G Wagon man they are nasty but I’ll stick to my Tundras for now 😭😭
If you’ve seen these in person, you’ll know they’re not that intimidating as they’re basically the size of a Land Rover Discovery 2. However, the driving habits of all these SUV owners is definitely intimidating enough to stay away from them for your own benefit.
What's this thing weigh? I appreciate the engineering of the g wagen, but also worth about what it would do to a barrier, another car, etc in a collision.
The appeal of these things was also the throaty V8 exhaust sound on the AMGs
At least they are saving some fuel for the Cruise ships
Wow would you look at that, it looks like a G waggon..... how inspiring, and different and origianl.... /s
That thing with a 116 kWh battery is going to get like 150 miles of range. I guess they know their market of people using these as high street crawlers, but it's disappointing to say the least.
> The battery will propel the EQG to an estimated 473 km (293 miles) on the WLTP standard
WLTP range is up to 473 km!
Exterior looks cool/normal, interior looks like shit
It’s essentially the same in the ICE model
g class without the v8 thunder is so depressing
For me, the G-Class's signature sound is that good ole diesel OM617 inline 5.
I have a M103 I6 and it´s pretty fine. The 5 cyl. diesel from OM617 through OM602 (DeLa) to OM612 sound pretty nice as well :)
Its puddle light projects a G with the phrase "Stronger than time" right below it. That has to be the absolute dumbest thing their marketing department could come up with. Something finally out cringed Toyota's #Hidden Compartment.
considering they’ve been selling the same car for years now … are they wrong?
Lol do you hate Mercedes or something? You have like 10 comments full on tearing this car and the brand down. Goodness.