Genesis GV60 2022 Review

Intro, Price, Options and Verdict

Introduction

The Hyundai Group has the bit between its teeth with electrification. We really liked the IONIQ 5 and Kia EV6, but there’s one more Hyundai brand that has benefited from the same EV platform – Genesis. It’s the luxury marque from the same group, with a similar relationship to its sister brands as Lexus has to Toyota. The GV60 uses Hyundai’s E-GMP platform, and you can see the family resemblance to the IONIQ 5 from the side. But the Genesis spin is much sleeker and more sophisticated, with none of the “modern retro” look.

Price and Options

The GV60 comes in three basic flavours. All three have a 77.4kWh battery, but the motor power and configuration varies. The Premium trim comes with a 226bhp (168kW) motor on the rear wheels only. The Sport is all-wheel drive with a total 314bhp (234kW, with 74kW front and 160kW rear). Finally, the Sport Plus, which we test drove, also has all-wheel drive, but a considerable 483bhp (360kw) divided equally front and rear.

Basic equipment is generous, starting with heated, electrically adjusted folding wing mirrors. Seat adjustment is electric as standard including lumbar. There’s Smart Cruise Control with Stop & Start, which is an adaptive system. There’s a full safety package, which we will detail in the relevant section below. Front and rear parking sensors and a rear camera are standard. A wireless phone charger and heat pump are included, too. Many other premium brands will make you pay for a number of these things as extras.

As you go up the models, most of what you get is a more powerful motor. Our sample car had 19in wheels, which was a surprise as it was a Sport Plus model. These are the standard wheels on the Premium car, but the Sport officially comes with 20in wheels and the Sport Plus 21in. However, you also get additional interior luxuries with the Sport Plus, including suede elements and Nappa leather seat upholstery. You also get performance features including Electronic Control Suspension and an electronic LSD.

Where the Hyundai IONIQ 5 starts at £41,900 and the EV6 at £44,195, you pay a bit more for the Genesis brand. The GV60 Premium costs £47,005, while the Sport is £6,600 more at £53,605, and the Sport Plus a considerable £18,400 more at £65,405. The EV6 is the best comparison, because the base IONIQ 5 has a smaller battery.

The default paint choice is white, and there are lots of other options, including lime green and an array of metallic choices, all of which cost £740. There are four matte paint choices for £1,100 each. For the Premium and Sport, the base interior choice is black, but Nappa Leather with quilting can be added for £2,300 in black or three two-tone varieties. The Sport Plus comes with this as standard but there is a Performance option for £250 more.

Then there’s an Innovation Pack for £2,070 with additional driving assistance and safety features, a panoramic sunroof for £1,020, and the Outdoor pack with vehicle to load adapter for £880. There are quite a few other packs available, too – something you don’t see with mainstream Hyundai and Kia cars, which tend to bundle most things into their trim levels. It’s a disappointment to see the panoramic sunroof is an optional extra even with the Sport Plus trim.

Overall, while the Genesis GV60 starts off cheaper than premium competitors such as the Jaguar i-Pace or Mercedes EQC, once you start adding options to the Sport Plus the price differences are less pronounced.

Design, Comfort and Storage

Exterior Design

The GV60 has a much smoother and more rounded look than either of the other Hyundai Group models using this platform. All these cars look smaller than they are until seen next to other vehicles, but the GV60 is particularly deceptive. The rounded front and mean-looking split LED headlights are also confident and classy.

The rear is curvy, with a little spoiler adding a sporty appearance. The pronounced slant of the rear and privacy glass add a bit of bling, but this is far from a cheap-looking car. In fact, we’d say that it’s the most aesthetically pleasing vehicle on the E-GMP platform so far. The plastic wheel arches do give the game away that this is a crossover not a large hatchback, but the curved elements above the door sills add to the sense of flowing lines and general dynamism of the design.

Interior Comfort

If the GV60’s exterior is a cut above other Hyundai Group E-GMP cars, the interior is in a totally different league. Considering that this is what an owner will spend more time looking at than the exterior, it makes sense. The attention to detail is on par with luxury German brands, although the design is less old-fashioned. The Nappa leather quilted upholstery is quite ostentatious but provides a strong sense of prestige, as does the use of interior trim materials. There is a variety of choice here from light to dark, but all options are well appointed.

The central console doesn’t move like it does with the IONIQ 5, but there is a gap between it and the dashboard should you need to slide from passenger to driver’s side or vice versa. This console has a couple of cupholders with spring grabs that will accommodate a variety of cup sizes. Behind this is a wireless mobile phone charger and small cubby under the armrest. There are a couple of USB ports (both Type C) and a 12V car power adapter plug with an extra small cubby ahead of this central console underneath the dashboard.

The front seats are comfortable and will be great for longer journeys. We always like to have higher side bolsters in a sporty car capable of dynamic cornering and the GV60’s seats fit this. Having electronic adjustment, with two memory slots for the driver, makes it easy to configure an optimal seating position. There is lumbar adjustment included too. Overall, there’s plenty of space up front for driver and passenger.

The rear of the GV60 is equally as sumptuous as the front, but not quite so spacious. An average-sized adult will have more than enough head and knee room, but if you’re well over six feet you will feel a little more cramped, particularly above your head. The middle seat is adequate for an adult over short distances and a child over longer ones. If you don’t have a middle seat passenger, you can pull the back down to make an armrest with two cupholders. The two outer rear seats have ISOfix points hidden subtly behind zippers.

Rear seat passengers benefit from two central USB C ports and a little netted cubby to put your device in. Like the Hyundai and Kia cars on this platform, rear air vents can’t be found in the middle, but instead are located in the B-pillar. This enables them to be higher up and more easily directed at your face, which will be great if rear passengers need some fresh airflow without opening the windows in hot weather or on the highway.

Storage and Load Carrying

Both the IONIQ 5 and Kia EV6 offer capacious boots, and the GV60 is no different. The tailgate is powered, but not with a kick release, at least not one that we could get to work. The basic capacity is 432 litres, which is decent for a crossover but not massive for this size of car. It’s also less than the Hyundai and Kia alternatives. The manual blind can be placed in three different locations, to accommodate the fact that the rear seats are able to recline. There’s a layer below the boot floor, just the right size for all the charging cables.

The rear seats drop forward in the typical 60/40 split, and surprisingly for a luxury car there is no way of triggering this from the back of the vehicle. Instead, you have to go round each side to drop the seats forward from the rear doors. With both rear seats down, the capacity is 1,550 litres, which is slightly less than the IONIQ 5 but more than the EV6. It’s a good capacity and ample for a trip to Ikea, although we suspect Genesis owners will have their interior decoration supplies delivered. And fitted by someone else. There’s a small frunk, which like the IONIQ 5 and EV6 will be bigger with the single-motor car. The GV60 can tow 750kg unbraked and 1,600kg braked.

In-Car Entertainment and Controls

The main car controls are a blend of button designs that will be familiar to Hyundai owners and features with a little more flair. A central flourish is what happens when you push the Start button to turn the system on. A crystal half-globe in the central console flips over to reveal the rotating drive control knob, which you can use to select drive, reverse, and neutral, with a button in the middle for park.

The central console also has buttons and rollers for menu control. There’s a big dial for operating the infotainment display, of which more shortly. The buttons for the heated and ventilated front seats and heated steering wheel are stock Hyundai, so are functional and solid.

The plus steering wheel has a sturdy feel, with controls for the adaptive cruise on the left plus menu, voice and media controls on the right. There are conventional stalks for lights and indicators on the left, plus windscreen wipers on the right. Paddles are available for varying the level of regenerative braking. Most enigmatic is the Boost button, which is a feature only of the Sport Plus car. This gives extra power for ten seconds, for those opportunistic A-road overtaking manoeuvres.

The air conditioning has some separate buttons for temperature – one on each side for the two zones. There are separate buttons for window demisting as well. But a touch screen in the middle is used for operating fan speed. These air conditioning controls sit above a row of buttons for selecting infotainment screen functions and media control.

The dashboard is dominated by two 12.3in displays, placed side-by-side so they look like one screen, although there is a clear gap between them. The instrument display is digital, with the current speed presented in purely numerical form, within a dial showing power delivery and regeneration on the left. There is ADAS safety information in the middle, with a configurable widget on the right. Remaining range, battery percentage, temperature and efficiency can be found along the bottom. The HUD, included with the £2,070 Innovation Pack, is projected directly onto the windscreen, showing speed, limit, ADAS information and navigation messages.

This brings us to the 12.3in infotainment display. This is a touchscreen, but you have the aforementioned dial to operate it as well and some buttons beneath the air conditioning controls to select individual panels such as navigation and media. The screen is primarily based around large cards representing the individual sections. These make it clear where to go for specific needs.

There’s a Genesis LIVE section, which isn’t populated with quirky progressive rock concert footage, but instead configures the car’s connected services. You can search the satnav by keyword or look for points of interest via categories, the address, or previous destinations. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are supported (both through wires) so you can use your phone to navigate instead.

Performance, Running Costs, Range, and Safety

Performance and Driving

The GV60 is clearly intended to have a sporty feel about it, but it’s also a sizeable crossover so not exactly a sports hatchback. The rear-wheel-drive car takes an unexceptional 7.8 seconds to reach 62mph, but the Sport and Sport Plus are more significantly quick. The Sport takes 5.5 seconds to hit 62mph, and the Sport Plus just 4 seconds. However, the latter is only achieved by pressing the Boost button, so is only available for ten seconds at a time.

When you hit Boost, the seatbelt pulls you back into the seat, the suspension stiffens, the display changes colour, and you feel like something dramatic is about happen. It does – when you hit the accelerator. If you feel the need to dominate off the lights or safely pick off that annoying caravan on an A-road, Boost mode is handy to have available.

Otherwise, the Sport Plus car is still about as quick as you’d want a crossover to be, and we suspect the Sport will be adequately fast too. Handling is tight, so while this isn’t a sportscar it is enjoyable to drive. The lane departure warning (of which more shortly) is quite sensitive and seems to make itself known too much if you get close to the central line on an A-road. But otherwise, the GV60 can dispatch windy routes at speed with plenty of ease.

It feels confident at highway speeds, too, and allied with those plush, comfortable, adjustable seats, should be great for longer journeys. The bulk of the car means it has presence and feels solid and dependable on the road. Maximum speeds are 115mph, 124mph and 146mph for the Premium, Sport and Sport Plus respectively.

Range and Charging

All versions of the GV60 have the 77.4kWh battery, but the range varies with motor power. The rear-wheel-drive Premium offers a respectable 321 miles, but this drops noticeably for the all-wheel-drive Sport to 292 miles and to 289 miles for the Sport Plus. These are decent figures, but we are hoping for cars with even longer ranges in the next few years.

With the same battery in every car, however, charging times are identical. Since these cars have an 800V subsystem, then can take full advantage of 350kW DC chargers and replenish from 10 to 80% in just 18 minutes. This rises to 73 minutes if you can only find a 50kW DC charger. The GV60 supports 11kW AC, so if you have three-phase power available you can charge to 100% in 7 hours 20 minutes. On a 7.4kW AC wall box it will take more like 12 hours.

Like other vehicles in the Group, the GV60 has a party trick up its sleeve as well – vehicle to load. This requires the £880 “Outdoor Pack” option, which enables power output both inside and outside the car, but also includes a roof rack. This can deliver up to 3.6kW at 240V via a regular domestic power plug, either beneath the rear seats inside the car or via an adapter for the Type 2 port on the outside. This will be great for running a champagne fridge on a posh picnic, or a projector for campsite entertainment. You could even charge another EV, which we tried successfully with the IONIQ 5.

Running Costs

Efficiency ranges from a decent 4.1 miles per kWh for the rear-wheel-drive Premium to 3.7 miles per kWh for the all-wheel-drive Sport Plus. Assuming a 29p per kWh home supply (likely to go up again in September 2022), this equates to 7p to 7.8p per mile. A Tesla Model 3 will be noticeably cheaper per mile, but most electric SUVs will be equal or worse.

Insurance groups are unsurprisingly high, starting at 41 for the Premium. The Sport is in group 45, and the Sport in group 49, one lower than a Tesla Model 3 Long Range or Performance. Genesis cars come with a standard five-year, 50,000-mile warranty, which isn’t as generous as some Korean cars, although better than most European ones. But the powertrain has a ten-year, 100,000-mile guarantee, while the battery has the typical eight-year, 100,000-mile guarantee for 70% capacity.

Safety

Like other Korean cars, the GV60 is packed with safety features from Premium trim upwards. These include adaptive Smart Cruise Control with stop and start (for traffic jams), rear blind spot collision avoidance assist, lane keep assistance, forward collision avoidance and assistance (which includes pedestrian and cyclist detection), speed limit assistance, forward collision avoidance at junctions, and highway driving assistance. The GV60 doesn’t have a Euro NCAP rating yet, though.

You can add further advanced safety features with the £2,070 Innovation Pack. This bundles reverse parking collision and avoidance, adaptive LED headlights, more advanced forward junction collision avoidance, remote smart parking, a 360-degree parking camera, blind spot monitoring, and Genesis’s Highway Driving Assist II, which enables a modicum of self-driving on motorways. You can also augment the side mirrors with cameras and screens, which is another £1,240 extra. However, while side mirror visibility is good even without this, the rear-view mirror is obscured by the narrow rear window and spoiler.

Key Specifications

*based on electricity costs of 29p per kWh