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Long-term review: Genesis Electrified GV70 month 5

February 28, 2025 Matt Allan

Our long-termer has picked up a spot of damage, but its high-tech offering continues to impress, even if it doesn’t come cheap

Sad news! Our long-term Genesis GV70 has sustained an injury. After months of schlepping around grotty country roads, getting utterly filthy, dodging fallen branches, massive puddles and wheel-destroying potholes, the Big Red Machine has picked up a battle scar. Although you’ll have to look pretty closely to spot it.

At some point in the last few weeks, a stone has been flicked up with Luke Littler-like accuracy and cracked the tiny front-view camera, mounted right in the centre of the car’s huge grille. The camera still works, which is some relief, but the lens is now so cracked it appears to be permanently iced over and means the 360-degree camera coverage is now more like 283-and-a-bit-degrees.

Still, I’m generally able to slot a car into a parking space without crashing headlong into anything, so it’s no great loss. And the more useful Surround View Monitor is still working fine. Through some kind of witchcraft, this presents a perfectly accurate top-down image of the car in relation to things around it and it makes it a doddle to ensure this largish SUV is perfectly between the lines in tight parking spaces.

The GV70’s all-seeing eye isn’t seeing quite so much any more

That technology is by no means exclusive to the Genesis, but it has proved handy on more than one occasion. Another feature that’s not a Genesis exclusive but does seem to only be used by the wider Hyundai family is the clever blind spot camera. Most cars warn of other vehicles in your blind spot via a flashing light in the door mirror. In the GV70, mirror-mounted cameras project a live rear-facing image onto the instrument display whenever you indicate. While it sounds distracting, it isn’t and it’s actually quite reassuring to get a real-time view of the area not covered by the camera.

Tech like that is one of the things Genesis has put a real emphasis on in the GV70, especially in models fitted with the optional £3,600 Innovation Pack. That brings the surround view monitor, the blind-spot camera, as well as quad LED headlights with intelligent dipping. These use selective dipping to avoid dazzling other drivers while still illuminating as much of your surroundings as possible with full beams. And after five months I’ve still never been flashed by another motorist, so they’re clearly working well.

The Innovation Pack also adds a comprehensive and clear head-up display. And if you really struggle with parking in tight spaces, there’s a remote parking function which, I confess, I’m still too nervous to test in public.

The blind spot video view is surprisingly useful

Finally, the innovation bundle includes highway assist 2.0, which combines adaptive cruise control, lane centring assistance and semi-autonomous lane-changing to, theoretically, make motorway driving easier. The adaptive cruise works well and reacts in good time, rather than slamming on the anchors at the last minute, and the lane keeping is generally fairly accurate on multi-lane roads. But the lane-change assist – activated simply by indicating – is so cautious and slow, you’d have to be immensely lazy to prefer it over performing the manoeuvre yourself.

Our test car also comes with five other options packs, including the Comfort Seat package which as well as adding a cooling function features the ergo-motion system that automatically gives you a massage after long stints at the wheel. Add it to the list of things I never knew I needed until now. That and the wonderful sounding Lexicon premium stereo (another £1,000) which also introduces clever active noise cancelling to enhance the car’s refinement.

All those options add to the cost – an extra £13,500 in total – and it’s arguable that you could comfortably live without any of them. But they do all add up to the general feeling of pampering that I still enjoy every time I get into the car and that I’ll miss when it goes back in a few weeks’ time.