Kreisel Electric, Arnold Schwarzenegger team up for Mercedes G-Class EV
The former governor goes green(er) without giving up his love for massive SUVs.
Arnold Schwarzenegger finally found a way to still give a hoot about the environment without it clashing with his love of gaudy, large SUVs. It's not a Hummer, that's for sure -- in fact, it's way cooler.
Kreisel Electric has a knack for electrifying the hell out of things -- last year, we looked at its Volkswagen e-Golf, which featured triple the range of a normal one. The company also electrified a Mercedes-Benz G-Class, a brutish old-school ute that cares not for things like efficiency. Yet now, it packs a battery that gives it a range of about 186 miles.
The 80-kilowatt-hour batteries are tied to just under 490 horsepower's worth of electric motors, which can shuffle this lead-box-on-wheels to 62 mph in just 5.6 seconds. It claims it needs just 25 minutes of charging to fill 80 percent of the battery's capacity, but it didn't specify the power level of charger required to hit that figure.
So where does Schwarzenegger come in? Well, he owned a diesel G-Class, but in his pursuit to improve his environmental footprint, he teamed up with Kreisel to create this electric Geländewagen.
And, as you can tell from the photos, he's digging it. It appears his love of cigars hasn't changed any, but his current ride is a far cry from the Hummer H1 that used to be practically grafted to his skin. Now, you'll never hear him coming.