Living with a Genesis GV70 Electricified Sport: a few weaknesses, but basically painless
After a few weeks of owning a Genesis, it’s noticeable that the GV70 is basically pain-free. There’s more nuance to the car than it looks, and you have to examine it a little more closely to get the most out of it – and if you put in a little effort, you’ll find some useful hidden depths. I still think it looks good from certain angles and odd from others – I still can’t get over that C-pillar with the undercut chrome line – but in general, everyone I’ve spoken to seems to think it looks pretty expensive. That’s a good thing – especially when it actually is a bit expensive.
To be honest, I initially found the interior quite nice, if a little gloomy and with the feeling that 25 percent of the functions are probably superfluous; there is a much Features to sift through. But the more time I spent in it, the more I appreciated the quality and overall quietness. The seats are firm and supportive. The heating and massage functions aren’t essential but oh-so-luxurious. The materials are excellent and the fit and finish solid, and after a few thousand miles on the clock, there’s no sign of wear and tear. It shouldn’t be, but that’s not true of all cars out there.
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The capacitive buttons on the center screen for seat heating/steering wheel/air conditioning are very nice, and although the central touchscreen is too far away to operate while driving, the center console scroll wheel is perfectly functional and useful. But again, there are a lot of options; you have to scroll through a lot of things to find what you’re looking for, and the depth of the info/options bar definitely feels heavy. Sometimes there is luxury in simplicity.
However, I have found time to stop being so range-obsessed and actually drive it with a bit more verve, sport mode, boost button and all (it’s located at the bottom of the steering wheel and puts the engines into maximum attack mode for 10 seconds). And guess what? Despite being a fairly burly mid-size SUV bus, the GV70 is more than capable of cruising down a road at a reasonable speed. Good grip, decent body control, not quite the dynamics of a landed fish.
I love looking at the little torque distribution graphs in the dash (mostly rear-wheel drive, front axle in play when things get… expressive). But the whole thing only really works up to 7/10. Once the car leaves its comfort zone, it starts abusing the outside front tire and wants to go wide, with or without the throttle. You can drive around anything, but it’s not a joyful, fast driving machine, more of a fast flat-out.
Still, some things were a real surprise. First of all, the range calculation seems much more accurate than any other car I’ve driven recently. If it says 220 miles and you drive as you have been, it’ll be around 220 miles, or 3.0 miles/kWh. With the aircon off and you look closely, you’ll see more like 240 miles (so more like 3.3/3.4 miles/kWh) – this on a WLTP of 283 – and possibly more as the weather warms up. It manages my normal commute from Lincolnshire to Heathrow without having to stop. It needs looking after and there’s not a huge amount of range left, but it’ll manage.
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And when you do need to charge, it seems to soak up the juice quite happily. OK, it hasn’t peaked above 120kW (so far), but that was down to the charger rather than the car, I suspect. But 20 minutes at over 100kW and it’s ready for most journeys.
There are a few things that are annoying, though. Greeting and goodbye songs. Start-up dings. An external beeping sound when reversing—like from a garbage truck—that my neighbors must love (the charging port is in the nose, so I usually back out of the driveway. To the chagrin of said neighbors, I usually leave the house early). Seatbelt bongs that go off immediately, even if you’ve only just started the car to warm it up. An exit warning that tells you to check for rear seat passengers or perhaps forgotten possessions. Which happened ONE time with a toddler, and I was very tired. Intensely glowing red blind spot indicator lights in the side mirrors, a paranoid anti-collision brake assist at low speeds. Digital representations of analog dials that tend to jitter a little when they’re computationally intensive.
As you can see, these are generally small things and software stuff. They may not bother some people, but they annoy me. Maybe we have to get used to it, but I tend to think that a lot of these things are more “because we could” than because we should. I have a feeling we’re going to see a decline in extra features and cluttered electronics just to make things a little less overwhelming.
The GV70 hasn’t convinced me yet. And I think I know why… I’ll reveal it in the next update.
