JUST about anything that takes the stress out of car ownership has to be a serious consideration – and the concierge service offered to Genesis owners is just that.
No longer the need to worry when the next service is due – every customer gets their own on-call personal assistant to take you through the ownership experience. And when it comes to service time, they’ll arrange to pick it up, do the necessary and then pop it back to you. Fully valeted too.
Though if the key in your pocket is for their all-electric GV60 AWD Sport plus, you might be a bit reluctant to hand it over in the first place. It has to be one of the more interesting electric cars around at this moment in time.
Genesis is a luxury offshoot of Hyundai, and models have been on sale in the US and South Korea for the past 14 years or so, so it’s not their first attempt at making luxury cars. And with a backing group of Kia/Hyundai that has a pedigree of evolving rapidly from making cheap runabouts to very acceptable vehicles in all sectors of the market, there’s a lot of knowledge and expertise to draw on.
GV60 is the first step on the brand’s path to becoming fully electric by 2030 and the design is clean, with smooth shapes and few fussy details. Its split LED lights are a Genesis signature and it retains the family grille up front as well.
The GV60 range is relatively simple: there are three trim levels: Premium uses a single rear motor, while Sport and Sport Plus have dual motors (both equally powerful to help balance) and all-wheel drive. All versions use the same 77.4kWh battery pack.
GV60 is the third car to use Hyundai and Kia’s dedicated E-GMP electric car platform, after the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6, cars where the technology has already been proven to use energy efficiently and recharge rapidly.
Sampled here is the Sport Plus range-topper, which has identical 241bhp motors on each axle, for totals of 483bhp and 516lb ft.
It’s a fast car, then, that features active noise cancelling, adaptive suspension, a rear limited slip differential and four-piston brakes.
Where it really stakes its claim for ownership is inside the cabin, which is a high point. Nearly everything feels high quality, with soft-touch materials even down to the door bins. There’s some typical Far Eastern shiny silver finish evident but also a lot of leather, alcantara and decent quality tactile plastics.
And there are so many neat finishing touches – the huge glove tray (formerly a mere box), the crystal ball gear selection that pivots round on start up, the slot to drop your mobile into to charge it (and the audible warning if you leave it there) to name a few.
Two large screens stretch two thirds of the way across the dash and are clear, responsive and easy to use. There’s a rotary selector, shortcut buttons and dedicated controls for climate control.
The front seats have a wide range of adjustment, including side bolsters which close in to grip you better when you hit warp factor via the boost button on the steering wheel.
To access all of the available kilowatts, it will unleash the full 483bhp for a maximum of 10 seconds at a time.
It’ll hit 62mph in just 4 seconds, 11.5seconds to hit 110mph. The GV60 Sport Plus tops out at 146mph and doesn’t feel it would have issues getting there……. Some have referred to it as ‘giggle inducing and I wouldn’t disagree…..
The rear has good leg room and decent head room, and the seatback has the ability to be be reclined quite a long way.
The absence of a centre tunnel allows for a floating centre console that leaves storage room beneath.
GV60 behaves like a good EV should and the steering wheel paddles let you vary the amount of brake regeneration through five levels, from frictionless coasting to one-pedal driving.
Genesis GV60 Sport Plus AWD dual motor
Price: £65,405
Electric motor/s: Two permanent magnet synchronous motors, four wheel drive
Drive battery: 77.4kWh Lithium-ion
Power: 429bhp (483bhp on overboost)
Torque: 516lb/ft
Top speed: 146mph
0-62mph: 4.0sec
Emissions: 0g/km
Range: 289 miles
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