► The first electric Genesis tested► Early pre-production first drive
► 289-mile range, up to 483bhp
Can you tell this is a pre-production car? What gave it away?
This is the very-nearly-ready GV60, the first electric car from Genesis, set for launch in Europe in the coming weeks. The Sao Paolo Lime paintwork will be an option; the stickers won’t be.
When it does land in the UK (deliveries are expected to begin this summer), prices will start from £47k for the single-motor entry-level model, up to £65k for the top-spec, twin-motor, all-wheel-drive Sport Plus version this test car is equivalent to.
Genesis is linked with Hyundai, right? So is the GV60 related to the Ioniq 5?
It’s twinned (or rather tripletted) with the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and the Kia EV6, using the same E-GMP platform. That means a great deal of interior space, rapid-charging capability (Genesis claims 10 to 80 per cent in 18 minutes via a 350kW charger), and dramatic proportions.
The Genesis wears its rounded lines differently from the angular, retro Hyundai and wedgy, hot-hatchesque Kia, which are much bigger in real life than they appear in pictures. The GV60 looks its size, and feels more like a traditional crossover in proportion. It’s still an arresting design, with a sweeping roofline (yet plenty of rear headroom), and intricate alloy wheels (21-inchers on this car) popping from the arches.
In line with the Genesis brand’s upmarket positioning, and the GV60’s luxurious spec, it’s more expensive than its sister cars. At the time of writing, the Ioniq 5 ranges from under £38k to £46k, and the Kia EV6 from under £42k to £54k.
It’s the first electric Genesis but not the last. The company plans for all new Genesis models to be fully electric by 2025, and for its non-electric cars to be phased out by 2030.
Luxurious how?
Step inside and it feels and smells upmarket, with high quality leather, suede and ornate, but not showy, metal trim with impressive fit and finish (by any standards, not just for a pre-production car).
The design individualism continues from the inside, with lozenge and chevron themes. And some unusual touches: the floating centre console is inset with what appears to be a crystal ball, lit from within. Press the start button and it flips over to become a twist ’n’ go gear selector for Reverse, Neutral and Drive. Beneath the console there’s plenty of oddments space, and more in a stowage bin under the dash. The roominess is accentuated by the flat floor. Your phone can be tucked away in a wireless charging spot within the centre console, which neatly obscures the screen from view so you don’t get distracted by notifications while you’re driving.
On the downside, the driving position is extremely high, even by crossover standards, and the steering wheel doesn’t adjust far enough to compensate. Look to the mirrors and you find they’re actually cameras on stalks, with screens at the junction between the base of the A-pillars and doorcards (although that will be an option in the UK, with conventional mirrors standard).
What’s it like to drive?
Smooth, rapid and quiet too, admirably refined at a cruise. Only downside is the soggy handling, with this pre-prod car’s suspension set-up a hotchpotch of Korean and USA settings. Hit a bump and the car continues to wobble, jelly-like, for some distance afterwards. European cars are set to get a more well resolved set-up (and need it).
It’s certainly fast, with a temporary shot of maximum-torque acceleration available via the Boost button on the steering wheel. It makes the accelerator pedal so sensitive it’s worth bracing yourself beforehand – it really is very accelerative in this mode. In fact, there’s quite a marked step in pedal sensitivity between each of the driving modes.
How well does the cameras-for-mirrors set-up work?
It takes a few miles to adapt to. At first you might find your eyes naturally darting to the camera stalks the other side of the window glass, where the mirrors would be, rather than to the screens within the car (which are mounted at the junction between the bottom of the interior-side A-pillar and the top of the doorcard.
There’s more refocusing time between fixing your gaze on the screens and readjusting it to the landscape beyond the windscreen ahead, and if you’re wearing sunglasses on a bright day, that darkens things a little compared with looking out at conventional glass mirrors. At night there’s a certain amount of glare from car’s headlights and streetlamps behind, too.
But none of these factors are complete deal-breakers. As the miles tick by, you become more and more accustomed and before too long you’ll likely find them just as usable as regular mirrors. Superimposed graphics help judge the distance to vehicles behind, which helps with getting your bearings.
There’s a further camera function in that when you indicate, a blind-spot camera display appears on the instrument panel. Together with all-round parking cameras displayed on the large touchscreen, it’s a relatively easy car to manoeuvre despite the natural blindspots of its large C-pillars.
How efficient is the GV60?
We covered more than 400 miles during our test, during which this car shows itself capable of travelling more than 230 miles between charges, including a great deal of motorway and A-road driving. That compares favourably with the on-paper range of 289 miles for this spec GV60. It’s not possible to rapid-charge this pre-production car (and so a fair bit of time was spent plugged in) but it’s claimed customer cars will be capable of 350kW rapid-charging from 10 to 80 per cent in 18 minutes.
Levels of energy regeneration can be increased and decreased by gearshift-style paddles behind the wheel, from coasting to one-pedal driving.
Anything else I should know?
The infotainment set-up is superb. The large, ever-so-slightly curved touchscreen has an uncluttered and pin-sharp display that’s intuitive to use. Aside from prodding the screen, you can also access short-cut keys at easy reach on the centre console, or use a clickwheel (with a trackpad for scribing in postcodes and so on) just behind it. Together with voice control (which worked averagely well in this test car), there are four ways of executing a command, and each of them feels easy and natural.
To me, this feels a much better execution of a modern interface than BMW’s latest iDrive system in the iX.
Genesis GV60: verdict
This already feels like a thoroughly convincing upmarket EV crossover, even in pre-production form. Different and interesting, in a good way – there’s much to like here.
If Genesis’s large and resolutely combustion-powered initial launch models in the UK felt very much like niche products, the GV60 has the potential to appeal to a truly wide audience (albeit a relatively deep-pocketed one, given its price premium over other E-GMP cars). The clean-slate EV paradigm shift for consumers means that the old, established brands are no longer an obvious choice. For Genesis to gain a foothold in the UK, the GV60 feels a perfect car, and an extremely credible one.
No star ratings for now, given the unfinished status of this test car, but the production model could well score very highly. Stay tuned for the full verdict in a few short weeks.
Keyword: Genesis GV60 (2022) pre-production review: almost-finished business