Why 10,000 miles in a Genesis Electrified G80 left us wanting more

Ironically, a frunk would work well for the Electrified G80, whose charging port is disguised behind a swing-out flap in the grille.

I soon learned to be pleased with the near-central position of that port, having long ago discovered the efficacy of nosing straight into a public charging slot when surrounded by badly parked other brands with ports in their front or rear flanks.

I went to Genesis’s fleet HQ to collect the car and was at first deterred by its 5005mm overall length, which puts it squarely into Mercedes S-Class territory.

But I was pleased with its lowness (1470mm) because this promised good motorway aerodynamics and a decent range. The length also helps with the design proportions: the G80 always looks imposing as a whole, even if that massive cross-hatched grille, which ironically doesn’t collect air, can be a bit hard on the eye.

Our Electrified G80 had already had a 5600-mile career as a short-term test car for other hacks, but the build quality made it indistinguishable from a showroom edition. One disappointment (because of my own preference for unsubtle colours) was the £750 Hallasan Green metallic paint — tasteful but unadventurous.

Electrified G80 pricing starts at just under £70,000 and the car is very well specified out of the box.

Ours, however, had £14,360 of extras mainly in ‘packs’: an Innovation Pack, an Executive Pack, a Convenience Pack, among them. I’m still discovering exactly what goes into each pack, but it all adds up to the best-equipped car you could imagine.

Saunders was dead right about the interior: impressive seats with a fascia whose controls, switches, screens and instrument packs reek of quality.

I was already enjoying the comfort as I sat for the first time in the plush driver’s seat, finding my way through the forest of ADAS features and tuning out the various warning bongs, an early ownership operation that’s essential nowadays in many cars if you and it are to enjoy motoring life together.

Happily, the Genesis has a single steering wheel control that disables the various forms of steering intervention (that reset themselves at the beginning of every trip) with one long push.

And so to my early driving. Two things about the Genesis were instantly pleasing: the extreme refinement of its powertrain, which emits whines so faint that you have to listen for them, and the car’s quietness over coarse road surfaces and high-frequency bumps.

It announces itself as a kosher luxury saloon in the first mile or two, and my early impressions are that its steering and ride quality are well up to the mark, too.

There are four selectable driving modes, but I soon discovered that there’s enough performance available from the 364bhp dual-motor powertrain, even pushing 2.4 tonnes, when driving in Economy. I will, of course, try Comfort, Sport and Individual soon. So far, I’m seeing a very decent 3.6 miles per kWh.

The car arrived in a period of warm weather, and would predict up to 340 miles of range when fully charged. Hyundai and Kia cars normally measure range reliably, which is reassuring, and I’ve so far done one brisk 300-mile journey and arrived home with 40 miles still on offer.

In brisker weather over the past few days, the promise has fallen to 305 miles. It will be interesting to discover how far it drops in the dead of winter, but I’m confident the car will do as well as I need, especially since its 87.2kWh battery can be replenished from 10% to 80% in 21 minutes if you can find a fast enough charger. On your wallbox, the same operation takes seven and a half hours.

I’m pretty pleased with the Genesis so far, though I haven’t yet tried supermarket parking. But I’m loving the comfort and most of the gadgets, and I’m also finding that the big rear compartment really pleases passengers. This is turning into a sociable car. I like that.

Update 2 

The Genesis Electrified G80’s mileage is climbing fast, mainly because I trust this car’s range well enough to take it on the fairly long trips that are a large part of my motoring life without extensive grubbing about looking for charging points.

A couple of weeks back, in 10-12deg C weather, I wrote that the G80’s usual offered range was 325 miles. The temperature has now fallen closer to 3-5deg C and I’m now offered 290-300 miles.

That’s still fine, but even after years of driving EVs, I’m still not entirely happy about the seasonal range lottery in which all EV owners must take part, weather-dependent.

There’s been a decline in my average ‘fuel consumption’, too, probably attributable as much to my more committed driving in a now-familiar car as it is to the colder weather.

\

My introductory report talked about 3.6mpkWh; my running average now is more like 3.3mpkWh, and you have to take special measures to get it above 3.5. That’s still okay for a car of this size, although not amazing, especially since I rarely use the 4.5sec 0-62mph acceleration and cruise on motorways no faster than 70mph (a 74mph readout on the optimistic speedo).

I’m getting to grips with the three driving modes, mainly because they all work so well that you could choose any one. First to go was Eco, in which Eco doesn’t make much sense because the throttle response is so poor, but the Genesis gets off the mark well enough in that setting, and once you’re rolling it’s fine. Comfort mode is undoubtedly the most natural in feel and still gives you very decent access to the performance.

Sport is almost too eager for a car of this character, especially off the mark, although it only takes a minute or two to get used to it.

That setting also tightens the damping, which tames a tendency for the car to bounce on high-amplitude bumps but hurts the absorption of higher-frequency intrusions a little. You take your choice.

On the Fosse Way, the former Roman Road that connects Cirencester and Leicester, the passing performance in Sport is great: the car’s willingness to start sprinting the instant your right clog moves is invaluable. By the time you draw level with the vehicle you’re passing, you’re usually going so fast you can start slowing down.

It takes time to learn, but the way the off-throttle, regenerative braking can be adjusted with the steering column paddles (a feature of most Hyundais and Kias) is also invaluable in this large and heavy car.

You can hold the car on long downslopes without effort, and because there are four regenerative settings, including a free-rolling mode, there’s always a setting that seems to be ideal.

I’ve boasted before about the G80’s impressive rear passenger package and big rear doors, but an odd thing happened on that score in the past week.

I was parked in a lay-by and sending a few emails when two burly blokes in dark suits and shades pulled in behind in a fat black Audi. Cripes, I thought — they’re after my wallet.

But the leader removed his glasses, switched on a winning smile and asked what I thought of the G80 — and then wanted to take a look in the boot.

Turned out he ran a limo firm, the Audi was one of 30 he owned and he was interested in the electric G80 as an airport car, provided there was room for punters’ luggage in the boot.

His face fell when he saw the space available (it’s small in Audi A8 terms), and it dropped even further when he learned that because of its petrol model connections the G80 EV doesn’t have an under-bonnet ‘frunk’ to house the charging cables.

He liked the G80’s fundamentals — its plushness, styling and finish — but was doubtful it would do the airport job very well. Good for running about in inner London and the Home Counties, though, he decided. Which is exactly what I’m finding.

Update 3

I had been driving about happily in the electric Genesis G80 for three months before it occurred to me to do the obvious thing: test it from the back seat. I mean, here’s a vehicle that’s more than five metres long and in whose styling half the car world seems to see echoes of Bentley Flying Spur, yet all I had done was punt it about as any other commuter car.

The wrong was righted recently when we decided that the G80’s generous size, quiet ride and decent winter range (260-270 miles, if you’re sensible) made it ideal for a reporting job that needed several participants and a suitable place for them to shelter while a photography session was being held in particularly bleak conditions. I made a point of not driving and always travelling in the back, and it was a very pleasant experience.

For those who usually drive, rear travel by saloon is rarely fun. The rear door aperture is never as conveniently shaped as the front one, so getting in gracefully takes practice; leg and foot room are often insufficient; the front head restraints often restrict your view; the window sills tend to be high; the seat is often set low, so that the maker won’t be criticised for providing insufficient head room; much of the time, the pervading road noise means you can’t easily hear conversations in the front (if you want to); and the ventilation is often second-class.

In the G80, most of these drawbacks are swept away. Getting in is easy; the rear seat cushion is plush; you sit high enough to see; you can hear conversations in the front clearly; and you have excellent command of your own ventilation.

Travel like this for a while and you suddenly realise why five-metre cars have a place and a relevance, especially when they’re as frugal with the electrons as this one is.

The G80’s big flaw (in electric form at least) is a shortage of boot space: on our journey, even a pared-down collection of photographer’s kit left precious little room for anything else. But if you can live with that, you’ve got a good car.

Update 4

It’s a common argument for why someone couldn’t live with an electric car: “Yes, I rarely do more than 60 miles at a time, but what if I need to drive 500 miles at a moment’s notice, at a time when there are queues at rapid chargers?”

So I thought I would try just that. Over the Christmas holidays, I usually visit my parents in Belgium, which is only about 150 miles from my home in Kent. Not much of a test, then — but an urgent errand meant I went via Warwickshire, turning it into more like 500 miles. And I don’t have a home charger, so I started the trip with the battery at about 80%.

In fairness, I did have the right tool for the job, having borrowed Steve Cropley’s Genesis Electrified G80, with its 300-mile real-world range, 240kW rapid charging, cushy seats and adaptive suspension.

My first charging stop was still in the UK, so what of those mythical queues? Indeed, Cherwell Valley services on the M40 was absolutely rammed, but there were still two free charging stalls. Because of how busy it was, the G80 was only pulling energy at about 100kW, but that’s still not horrendous.

Onto Dover to catch the ferry, and unlike the Eurotunnel terminal, the Dover ferry port has no rapid chargers, which is a real missed opportunity, because you usually end up waiting around for half an hour anyway.

Because I didn’t want to arrive with a flat battery, I needed another top-up on the way from Calais. A few years ago, the UK government made it mandatory for new rapid chargers to offer contactless card payment, but that isn’t the case in the EU.

As a result, the first charger I arrived at asked me to swipe a charge card but was very unhelpful in telling me which one or if there might be another way to get it going. So I decamped to one a mile away, which thankfully did accept contactless payment.

While rapid chargers in the UK are usually near some sort of amenities, like a motorway service station or a retail park with shops and toilets, a lot of them in Belgium are located in featureless ‘carpool’ car parks that aren’t near anything.

On this evidence, I’d say it’s a win for the UK when it comes to rapid chargers. But where Belgium pulls ahead is with its slow ‘destination’ chargers. One day, we went to a restaurant in Ghent, which is a city that makes Oxford seem like Detroit for car-friendliness.

And yet of the few on-street parking spaces there are, quite a large proportion have chargers. Most supermarket car parks and village squares have a couple of them too, and they all appear to use the same smartphone app, Smoov, which does seem to work pretty, ahem, smoothly. They mostly supply 11kW, so by the time you’ve finished your long lunch, your car’s battery is nearly full.

I expected to have to visit a couple more rapid chargers, but with a few incidental slow charges and a top-up on the three-pin cable (using a European adaptor that’s rated for the sustained current) on my parents’ driveway, I cruised back home with no worries.

The fact that I’ve managed to spin a few hundred words out of driving to Belgium ultimately means that driving an EV long distances still isn’t as carefree as it really should be.

On the other hand, if you’re able to charge overnight and the only time you have to go hunting for chargers is on the occasional long trip, it’s a non-issue.

Illya Verpraet

Update 5

I’m a sucker for some automotive incongruity, but that’s not why I took the ambassadorial and opulent G80 to the rather less salubrious council recycling centre.

Well, it’s not the only reason… Does it look out of place? Like seeing an opera singer in a KFC. Funny.

Anyway, the G80’s usual custodian, Steve Cropley, had whisked away the Mini Cooper S for a few days, and while I was quaking at the prospect of threading his comparatively gigantic Genesis down my cul de sac, I was relishing the opportunity to empty my shed of the accumulated detritus that had failed to fit in the supermini.

Squeezing all of my broken Christmas decorations, garden trimmings and cardboard boxes into the G80’s 424-litre boot was a cinch, and it left plenty of room on the back seat for all the recycling from my New Year’s Eve party (I’d rather not discuss, never mind show a photo, of just how many bottles and cans there were…) and a knackered coffee machine that was approaching antiquity.

That still left plenty of space in the generous rear footwells, so I was also able to return a borrowed patio heater to my dad and collect a recently acquired second-hand footstool while I was out and about: driving is all about efficiency in 2025.

The G80 took it all like a champ, of course, with no cramming or contorting needed to squeeze everything in, and there was barely any jingling and jangling from my rubbish on the way there – despite the awful state of the roads and the ridiculous number of speed bumps en route.

Who needs a Transit? Errands dispatched, and the next day it was time to use the Genesis as intended, with a scheduled photoshoot necessitating a 200-mile motorway journey – and a tight timeframe that le no opportunity for charge stops.

Fortunately,, even with the temperature just below 8deg C, the G80 was promising a little under 260 miles on an 85% charge, and that figure only dipped slightly once I’d whisked it up to 70mph on the M25.

I arrived at my East Midlands destination with more than enough to get home again, even with the heater on all of the time and a less-than-cautiously applied right foot.

This is plainly not conceived as a do-it-all car, but it does a pretty convincing impression of one. The G80 is practical, efficient, smooth, quick, handsome and luxurious. It’s also remarkably short on compromise and fits into my life as well as any EV yet has – even if it didn’t quite fit down my road.

Felix Page

Final update

About halfway through my time with the excellent G80 Electrified, Genesis announced that henceforth customers would be encouraged to buy from stock, of which there seemed to be plenty.

The inference was clear: people were more reluctant to go electric than marketers had predicted, and they were especially reluctant to shell out for premium EVs, because of the allegedly weak residual values, as declines in Porsche Taycan, Jaguar I-Pace and Tesla prices had made abundantly clear.

At that stage, my relationship with the G80 was already well developed. Despite its occasionally inconvenient 5m length and small boot, it had rapidly become my car of choice for all significant journeys, on account of its economy, comfort, refinement and impressive range, even in winter.

I remember feeling pangs of regret that this class-wide prejudice would prevent a greater cohort of people from experiencing and knowing about a good car.

What therefore is the point in writing about 11,000 happy miles in a big Genesis? For me, it’s because a good car still represents a good opportunity.

As I write, there’s a 700-mile 24-plate car just like mine on Auto Trader at just under £60k before the haggling.

More than that, this has been an opportunity to appreciate the customer-friendly values of Genesis, whose quality and reliability are required by its masters at the top of the Hyundai Motor Group to be better than their mainstream cars’ – indeed, to be the best in the business, which is what I found.

This must be my first car in many years that had no glitches. Not one. It even uses a wheel and tyre design that protects you and your alloys against kerb damage.

The paint and trim were perfect and stayed that way. When my favourite car cleaners gave the car a decent going-over before its return, they found nothing: no wear, no parking scuffs, nothing.

And this for a car used every day and frequently le in the Waitrose car park, that’s a bit of a battleground opposite our office.

The G80 and I started well together. The car had every gadget going, from nappa leather seats to solar panels on the roof to trickle-charge the battery. Road test chief Matt Saunders promised me a high-quality car with a terrific interior, and so it proved.

In the first mile, I was loving the silence and supple suspension. And soon I discovered that all three of the driving modes (switch easily found on the centre console) had a handy purpose.

Economy mode made sense for long journeys because the accelerator response wasn’t seriously dulled, but I was offered an extra 10-15 cruising miles over Normal, which felt natural for all forms of give-and-take motoring.

Sport mode introduced a little bit of extra effort, sharpened the accelerator response, tamed the occasional bounce by tightening the shocks and cost only 10-15 miles in range, which was no issue in a car with a promised 323-mile range that would often deliver all of that.

Even on below-zero winter days, the full-charge range was always promised at 275 miles or more, and I was regularly pleased by the way the car delivered at least what it promised on long journeys.

Even after years in EVs, I’m still learning about range. The G80 (along with the improving availability of public charging) taught me how handy it can be simply to give a car a 10-minute tickle on a rapid public charger to extend a journey, because the on-board energy store doesn’t need any more.

Most of the time, I charged it at home from the 7kW charger in our garage. Overall consumption was 3.4mpkWh, which is worthy of a smaller, lighter EV.

I’m not sure why it was so good, but reasons seem to be that Korean cars are efficient compared with the rest of the horde; the G80 is a very low car compared with most purposebuilt EVs and thus appears to have a smaller frontal area; and the car’s 2.3-tonne kerb weight might not exactly be a low figure but is better than plenty in the 5.5m bracket, which run closer to 2.7 tonnes.

The impressive rear passenger package (complete with twin digital screens for those bored with conversation) came in useful now and then – but it also sometimes pointed up the weirdness of this car having such a tiny boot.

At one stage, I was buttonholed by an Audi-driving bloke in a lay-by who just wanted to see the boot space. He was in the airport limo business and dismissed the G80 as a prospect for his fleet with one glance.