Volkswagen Amarok vs KGM Musso Ev

What's the difference?

I couldn’t say I’m familiar with Australia’s inland deserts. I thought there were two or three - the Simpson, Gibson, maybe the Great Sandy. 

But did you know there are 10? And Volkswagen knows each intimately thanks to a recent Guinness world record verified crossing of them all… in one go.

It took a tweaked-up Amarok six days and 17 hours if you must know, and to celebrate VW has created a limited build (300 unit) version of the dual cab ute called, you guessed it… the 10 Deserts Edition.

And we were invited to steer it on-road and over a variety of challenging (public) off-road trails around Mt Macedon and Cobaw, about an hour’s drive north-west of Melbourne.

Not quite the Strzelecki Track, but tough enough to see if this special VeeDub has what it takes to drive your off-highway ambitions. So, stay with us!

Electrified utes are growing in popularity in Australia and carmakers have been paying attention.

While the BYD Shark 6 plug-in hybrid (PHEV) ute is by far the best-selling as it stands, there hasn’t really been any electric ute to go up against the poorly received LDV eT60, until now.

South Korea’s KGM (formerly known as SsangYong) has just launched the Musso EV, which is a purely electric dual-cab ute. It’s unrelated to the existing, turbo-diesel Musso and is more closely related to the current car-based Actyon and Torres SUVs.

Read along to see how this ute stacks up against its growing set of competitors.