Ola Källenius talked up an electrified G-Class last year and a new trademark filing seems to back up the truth of his words.
Daimler
Last fall, Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Källenius talked about the company’s plans to electrify its popular G-Class SUV, and now, a European Union Intellectual Property Office filing found by members of the MBEQClub forum and reported on by The Drive Friday shows that Mercedes has trademarked the name “EQG.”
This trademark filing very likely means that Mercedes is planning on offering a fully-battery-electric Geländewagen, rather than one that’s merely been “electrified” with a hybrid system. This electric G-Class would be cool for a bunch of reasons, not the least of which are the potential off-road benefits of having maximum torque at 0 rpm.
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It’s unclear at this point what kind of platform would underpin an electric G — would it be a new, built-to-purpose architecture? Or would Mercedes attempt to work within the deceptively small footprint of the existing G-Wagen? Beyond that, would we even get it in the US market? Mercedes has been hesitant to bring the EQC here, after all.
Mercedes has been going hard at the EQ thing, with journalists just now starting to get a taste of the forthcoming electric EQS flagship model and the EQC SUV now entering the market in Europe, so we’ll be very interested to see what this trademark filing means in the short term.
We reached out to Mercedes for comment, but didn’t hear back in time for publication.
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