GENESIS GV60

Korean premium brand facelifts its best-seller and brings bigger battery

- JAMES DISDALE

You can't fault the ambition of Genesis. Arriving in Europe barely five years ago, the Hyundai Motor Group's luxury brand has ignored the received wisdom that pretenders to the established order should take it slowly when trying to get a slice of the premium pie. In that short space of time, it launched an entire product lineup, largely electrified, that made up for what it lacked in brand recognition with technical innovation, quality and kit.

Adding a certain style to that list of merits was the GV60, a distinctive crossover-coupé that was Genesis's first all-electric offering. It was based on the advanced 800V E-GMP architecture shared with Hyundai's Ioniq 5 and Kia's EV6, giving the GV60 the state-of-the-art EV cachet that could only be rivalled by the far more expensive Porsche Taycan.

However, the GV60 has been in showrooms for three years now, so it's about due this midlife refresh. Overall sales numbers are still modest by the standards of rival premium brands (and bosses seem unruffled by that, citing quality not quantity as their goal), but the GV60 counts for around a third of Genesis’s UK registrations, so this is an important facelift.