► CAR lives with an electric Genesis GV70
► Korean luxe brand’s tentative steps in the UK
► EV SUV has refinement Crewe would be happy with
Let’s be honest: a six-month or even one-year test in a BMW, Mercedes or Audi is unlikely to shake out any serious flaws in the car or the networks that support it. The German premium brands have the construction of their cars and the cosseting of their customers so well sorted that glitches are rare, though they make great copy when they do occur.
Running a Genesis feels fractionally riskier. It’s not exactly a start-up: the colossal Hyundai group has been building cars under this luxury imprint since 2015, using systems and knowledge from their wildly popular mainstream models. In those eight years they’ve sold just over a million of them.
Genesis has only been offered in the UK since 2021, and although a small network of dealers is coming next year its retail and support operation is largely virtual, involving direct, fixed-price sales, and delivery and collection for test drives and servicing.
All that might make the GV70 Electrified sound very appealing: a luxury SUV built using bits familiar from the brilliant Kia EV6, among others, with no oleaginous dealer to haggle with nor distant showroom to trek to. But building cars to compete with those German brands is really hard, and non-European luxury brands have struggled to compete with the home teams in Europe, either growing slowly and staying relatively niche like Lexus, or failing like Infiniti.
The name implies that this car might not be off to the best start. The smaller GV60 is also electric, but isn’t described as ‘electrified’ as it was designed as an EV from the outset, using the same E-GMP platform as the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6. This GV70 Electrified is an electric version of the combustion-powered GV70. Retro-engineered EVs aren’t always the best and most resolved cars, but given the fossil-powered GV70’s good reviews and my own very happy experience running an EV6 long-term test car which shares its battery, motor and control systems with this car, I’m hopeful. The only immediately obvious compromise is the lack of a frunk.
Exterior design? You’ll decide for yourself, but I’m not wowed by the slightly anonymous, generic crossover-SUV looks. The split lamps are a Genesis design hallmark but perhaps aren’t quite distinctive enough, though its designers might take solace from the fact that people have seen that badge and asked me if it’s a Bentley.
The matte grey paint and very dark green interior are brilliant, though: an odd-sounding combination but it works. The quilted nappa leather upholstery is a £2350 upgrade and further enhances that Bentley feel, or you can have the same colours in the standard trim.
The user interface is familiar from the EV6, but there’s a lot more to wade through. You can choose not only the strength and duration of your massage but also whether you have an animation of what’s being done to your behind on the screen. You can alter the relative heat applied to your bum and back when the heated seats are on, or switch one section off. You can alter the ‘haptic intensity’ of the climate-control touchscreen, the volume and intensity of the piped-in soundtrack, speed and aperture of the electric tailgate and the road speed from which the intelligent main beam assist starts to work, and much more.
This endless configurability is impressive, but possibly a bit much when getting it all set up right feels like a mission rather than a pleasure, and you have to dig through so many menus to find the one thing you really need to change.
But when you do finally get it all working the way you want, and turn the rearmost rotary controller to Drive (rather than the confusingly similar one just in front which works the infotainment) the Genesis does another half-decent Bentley impersonation. It’s VERY refined: the ride is soft and supple even on the optional 20-inch rims, and the engineers have clearly worked hard to tune out the chassis noise, vibration and harshness often exposed by a good EV powertrain.
Friends get in and comment on how quiet it is. It’s hard to tell how much of that is down to the active road-noise cancelling function of the £1010 Lexicon audio upgrade, but the system’s ability to also produce a lot of good noise when you want it probably makes it worthwhile.
There isn’t space here to explore the details of the £14,500-worth of option packs fitted to my car, as we often would in a first Our Cars report: instead I’ll devote an entire report to them, once I’ve used them more. Reporting back on them, and the car in general, and a new brand and a different way of doing business might require more than the six months we plan to keep the Genesis. I might not even have got to the bottom of every sub-menu by then.
Logbook: Genesis GV70 Electrified
Price £64,405 (£78,895 as tested)
Performance 77.4kWh battery, twin e-motors, 483bhp, 4.2sec 0-62mph, 146mph
Efficiency 3.6 miles per kWh (claimed), n/a tested, 0g/km CO2, range 283 miles (claimed)
Energy cost n/a
Miles this month 1102
Total miles 6870