Genesis GV70 Electrified Sport - long-term review

A few weeks into Genesis keepership and the one thing that really stands out is that the GV70 is basically painless. It’s a car of more nuance than it looks, needs a bit more investigation to get the best from it - and when you put a bit of effort in, there are 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 line of chrome - but generally everyone I’ve spoken to seems to think it looks gently expensive. That’s a good thing - especially if it actually is a bit pricey.

To be honest, at first I thought the interior nice enough, if a bit sombre and with a feeling that 25 per cent of the functions are probably surplus to requirements; there are a lot of functions to trawl through. But the more time I’ve spent with it, the more I’ve come to appreciate the quality and general calmness. Seats are firm and supportive. The heat and massage functions not essential but oh-so-luxurious. The materials are excellent and the fit and finish solid, with a few thousand miles on the clock showing no wear. Which they shouldn’t, but it’s not true of all the cars out there.

The capacitative buttons in the middle screen for the heated seats/wheel/AC are very nice, and even though the central touchscreen is too far away to use on the move, the central console scroll-wheel is perfectly functional and useful. Again though, there are a lot of options; you flick through lots of stuff to find what you want, and the depth of the info-slash-optioning definitely feels heavy. Sometimes luxury lies in simplicity.

I have, however, found time to stop being such a range-obsessive and actually drive it with a little more vim, Sport mode, boost button and all (it’s on the bottom of the steering wheel, and puts the motors into max attack mode for 10 seconds). And you know what? Despite being a pretty portly mid-sized SUV bus, the GV70 is more than capable of getting down a road at a reasonable clip. Good grip, decent body control, not entirely landed fish dynamics.

I actually love watching the little torque-spread graphics in the instrument binnacle (rear-wheel drive most of the time, front-axle in play when things get…expressive). But the whole thing only really works up to 7/10ths. As soon as the car gets past it’s comfort zone, it starts to abuse the outside front tyre and want to wash wide, and that’s on the power or off it. You can drive around everything, but a joyous fast driving machine this is not, more of a fast ground-coverer.

Still, some stuff has genuinely come as a nice surprise. For a start, the range estimator seems to be far more accurate than in any of the other cars I’ve been driving lately. If it says 220-miles and you drive in the same manner as you have been, it’ll do… about 220 miles or 3.0miles/kWh. Aircon off and being particular, you’ll see more like 240 (so more like 3.3/3.4 m/kWh) - this is from a WLTP of 283 - with possibly more to come as the weather warms. It can manage my regular Lincolnshire to Heathrow commute without needing to stop. It needs care and there’s not huge range to spare, but it will do it.

And when you do need to charge, it seems to suck up the juice pretty happily. OK, so it hasn’t (so far) reached a peak higher than 120kW, but that was down to the charger rather than the car, I suspect. But 20 mins on anything more than 100 and it’s good to go for most journeys.

There are a few things that annoy, mind. Welcome and au-revoir ditties. Start-up tinkles. An external reversing beep - like a bin lorry - that my neighbours must love (the charge port is in the nose, so generally I reverse off the driveway. Unfortunately for said neighbours, I tend to leave the house early). Seat belt bongs that start immediately, even if you’ve just switched the car on to get it warmed up. An exit warning that directs you to check for rear seat passengers or possessions that you may have forgotten. Which was ONE TIME with a toddler, and I was very tired. Intensely bright red blind-spot indicator lights in the wing mirrors, paranoid low-speed anti-collision braking assist. Digital representations of analogue dials that tend to shiver a little when they’re doing some heavy computing.

As you can see, they’re generally niggles and software stuff. They may not bother some people, they annoy me. They may be something we have to get used to, but I tend to think that a lot of this stuff is more ‘because we could’ than should. I feel that we’re going to start seeing a rowing back of extra functions and loaded electronics, just to make it all a bit less overwhelming.

Meanwhile, the GV70 still hasn’t grabbed me. And I think I might know why… which I shall reveal in the next update.