FEATURE – 2012 Mercedes-Benz Ener-G-Force concept

Words: Mike Ryan    Photos: Daimler media

A greener future, a cleaner future and a future where everyone remains active and healthy until late in life. It all sounds quite utopian, but that was the future Mercedes Benz saw when they took part in a US design competition back in 2012.

LA Law

At the 2012 Los Angeles Auto Show, there was the usual range of new and concept vehicles you’ d expect to see, with previews of updated models in the SUV field that year including the Subaru Forester, Kia Sorento, Mazda CX-5, Mitsubishi Outlander and Hyundai Santa Fe, amongst others.

Concepts included the BMW X1-based ‘K2 Powder Ride’ and the ‘Hi-Cross’ from Nissan that previewed the next-generation X-Trail.

Another concept making its global debut at the LA Auto Show in 2012 was the ‘Ener-G-Force’ from Mercedes-Benz; a concept predicting a future that was more than a decade ahead.

The Ener-G-Force grew out of a concept initially created for that year’s ‘LA Auto Show Design Challenge’. Part of the LA Auto Show since 2004, the Design Challenge saw styling studios from various automakers pitch their designs to meet a specific theme and design brief. In 2012, that brief was ‘Highway Patrol Vehicle 2025’.

Mercedes-Benz, specifically Mercedes-Benz North America Inc. and the company’s Advanced Design Centre in California, was one of six companies to take part that year, with other submissions for the law enforcement car of the future coming from General Motors, Subaru and BMW, as well as Honda’s North American and Tokyo studios.

Unsurprisingly for the period, most of the designs submitted went down the route of autonomy and drones for the future of policing, but Mercedes went in a different direction.

Highway Patrol with no Highways

According to Mercedes-Benz’s Advanced Design Centre, the highways of the future will be electronically monitored, with automatic control and management of traffic eliminating the need for patrol cars in urban areas.   

The flipside of this, Mercedes mused, was an increased focus on outdoor activities, fuelled by advances in medicine and science enabling people to live longer, healthier lives. A desire for freedom and adventure in the great outdoors will dominate people’s leisure time, requiring a new type of vehicle to reach law enforcement incidents that are increasingly off the grid and outside the scope of satellite observation.

Fortunately for Mercedes, they already had a vehicle in their catalogue capable of reaching remote areas in the form of the G-Wagen. Introduced in 1979 as a go-anywhere 4x4, the G-Wagen had survived to 2012 and still remained true to its original purpose, so it was the ideal base to build a future “off highway” patrol car concept.

Labelled as the ‘Ener-G-Force’, the concept took the basic G-Wagen platform and advanced it to the year 2025, creating a vehicle that could not only enforce the law, but also be used as a search and rescue vehicle in arctic, tropical and desert terrain, or any other remote environment.

 “The Ener-G-Force is the vision of an off-roader that, while reflecting tomorrow’s adventures, also invokes the genes of the Mercedes-Benz off-road icon, the G model,” said Gorden Wagener, Director of Design at Mercedes-Benz Cars.

The Ener-G-Force design team, led by Creative Director Hubert Lee and including designers Jackson Luttig, Sylvain Wehnert and Armin Sinicki, retained a clear Mercedes-Benz identity in their concept, but added a bunch of distinctive features, including integral lights and sirens, a recovery winch for rescue work, integrated toolkit on the rear hatch,  massive ‘omnioterrain wheels’ and a water tank on the roof for a hydrogen fuel cell power system. 

The choice of clean fuel cell power was driven by the need to ensure the Ener-G-Force would have minimal environmental impact while still being effective in remote environments.

“Enhanced green-car characteristics and off-road capabilities will be among the fundamental virtues of a police car in 2025,” Mercedes stated upon their presentation of the concept.

In the renderings unveiled for the LA Auto Show Design Challenge, some of the concept’s more fanciful capabilities included a grappling claw that could be used to grab runaway vehicles and the ability to be airdropped by parachute into hostile environments.

Makin’ it Real

Inspired by what they had created for the LA Auto Show Design Challenge, Mercedes designers went a step further and reimagined their law enforcement renderings for the civilian market. They then turned the Ener-G-Force into a working 1:1 scale model.

Many of the police version’s styling touches, like the offset rear toolkit (accessed by turning the faux  wheelbrace), small glass area, integral auxiliary lighting, door handles mounted high on the B and C pillars, an integral winch and distinctive bumper design, were all carried over, but the full-sized civilian version did add some unique touches of its own. These included removable side mirrors with built-in ‘adventure’ cameras and a ‘Terra Scan’ 360-degree terrain mapping camera that scans the path ahead and adjusts suspension settings to suit.

The concept was jacked up on 20-inch rims, so treadplates were added in the front and rear bumpers for easier access to the front and rear storage areas, with tow hooks also incorporated into the rear bumper.

There were a bunch of other special features included, too, but a clever touch that escapes attention at first glance is the ‘G’ design incorporated into the LED headlights.

Clean Power?

The full-size Ener-G-Force carried the same ‘F-Cell’ branding on the lower sills as the police version renderings. Mercedes-Benz explained that the concept used a “hydro-tech converter” that converts natural and renewable resources into hydrogen to operate the fuel cells. The storage units for electricity generated in this process were housed in the side skirts and could be replaced with conventional hot swappable battery packs. These in turn powered electric motors in each wheel, making the concept four-wheel drive. A charge level indicator was added to the front guard vents, as well as a charging port for electronic devices.

An operating range of about 800km was claimed from this system, and being fuel cell-powered, the Ener-G-Force emitted nothing but water, which was housed in roof-mounted tanks.

Whether a hydrogen fuel cell was actually powering the concept or was just for show was never confirmed but one suspects a conventional G-Wagen petrol engine actually sat under the styled bonnet. Nevertheless, Mercedes presented abundant detail on the fuel cell power system.

True G

For all its future tech and future touches, the concept retained a clear visual link to the G-Wagen in terms of the overall shape and dimensions, as well as elements like the 3-piece side glass. This link to the heritage of the G-Wagen was intended from the very beginning of the project.

“Of course we wanted to take a clear step forward, but we also wanted the G’s characteristic features,” said designer Hubert Lee.

Another example of the concept honouring the current G-Wagen is the placement of the indicators on the top of the front guards.

Near Future Vision?

Today, almost eight years after the Ener-G-Force was presented, its vision has made no impression on the styling of the production G-Wagen, which remains as boxy, brutal and brilliantly effective as ever.    

Take a look at some other current Mercedes-Benz SUVs, though, especially the new, electric-powered EQC and you’ll see that some of the styling presented in the concept is starting to manifest itself in the production models.

Waganer said as much when he spoke of the concept back in 2012: “Modern and cool, [the Ener-G-Force] could also be a clue about a new beginning for the off-road design idiom of Mercedes-Benz.”

It seemed fanciful at the time, and even today, but that 2025 vision presented in the Ener-G-Force concept may not be too far away.