The Genesis G80 Electrified is expensive. Much more expensive than the regular G80. But there’s a clear target market here, despite that.
Over my shoulder is the new genesis electrified g80 and that name kind of makes it sound like a plug-in hybrid but it isn’t this is the fully electric version of the g80 which is fascinating a conversion of the standard petrol car to a fully electric powertrain backed up by an 800 volt architecture and i’ll explain in a minute why that’s a very good thing in
Today’s review of the electrified g80 i’m going to show you this car’s sumptuous interior and we’ll take a drive of the full-size electric sedan after we discuss the running costs but we’re going to start with the three best things and the three worst things about the new electrified gae before we get started hit subscribe down below compared to most evs charging
The electrified g80 is a pleasure firstly the charging door is in a great location and it blends into the grille so it’s not ugly and because this vehicle sits on hyundai’s 800 volt architecture shared with kia and genesis it means that this vehicle can be charged incredibly quickly you can can replenish 400 kilometers of range into the vehicle in about 22 minutes
Which is incredibly quick and faster than the mercedes eqs even though the first thing you notice about the electrified g80 when you walk up to it is the car’s solar roof it doesn’t really contribute to the range of the vehicle that’s down to the 87.2 kilowatt hour battery and efficient dual motor setup which gives this car excellent range and flexibility the wltp
Claim is 520 kilometers and in our independent testing we were able to achieve a range of 487 kilometers which is still really great and more than enough for most people but the price of the electrified g80 certainly won’t thrill everybody at 145 000 it’s nearly 45 grand more expensive than the turbo v6 version of the car which is similarly well equipped it would
Take you about 15 years of driving on zero electricity costs like if you had household solar before you were able to recoup the difference now the important point is compared to other full-size electrics at hands like the mercedes eqs the electrified g80 is a bargain but compared to its own siblings it looks expensive while the boot has a cool release integrated
Just above the reversing camera the space available has an impediment compared to the petrol version of the car and that’s due to the packaging of the electrical architecture of the vehicle that reduces boot space to just above 350 liters and the hump is a little bit unfortunately placed robbing you of room to put additional suitcases in the back of the vehicle i’m
Sure most will be able to cope but it’s not quite as practical as the petrol car genesis really knows how to do a sumptuous interior and apart from the flagship g90 that we don’t get in australia this car is the gold standard there’s leather everywhere and beautiful open pore wood that’s exclusive to the electric version foreign g80 might be 145 000 but at least
The interior feels up to the price this is a really special car to sit in and that’s not sucking up to genesis it’s just credit for a job well done in this interior i guess the unfortunate thing is that’s also true of the non-electric g80s which feel like exceptionally good value for money particularly at sub a hundred thousand dollars for the four cylinder version
But still let’s talk about the car we have in front of us which is the ev the first thing you’re going to notice in here is that you can get this electrified exclusive color scheme based around glacier white down here on the seats and this kind of soft bluey gray color on the secondary panels and it looks really good the g80 retains the rugby ball style steering
Wheel that some people love and some people hate personally i think it’s weird and quirky and that’s cool because we see far too much saminess in the car industry these days so give me the weird stuff the same goes for the wood gen genesis calls it forged wood on the electrified g80 it’s got a texture to it and it looks i don’t know like tie-dye honestly it looks
Really really cool i like it and there’s kind of burnished metals around the place as well and detailing in the speaker grilles for the lexicon stereo that sounds pretty decent although it’s interesting to note that for the gv60 genesis is now switched to bang olufsen for its stereos now speaking of technology the g80s 14 and a half inch wide screen up here on the
Dash is hard to not notice and you can drive it through this jog dial down here between the seats it is also a touchscreen but it’s certainly beyond my reach and then in front of me i’ve got a 12.3 inch digital instrument cluster which does have a 3d effect my long-term gv80 in the past had this feature but i found that i disabled it because i could never quite
Get used to it it made me feel a little bit seasick but you might differ in that regard we’re sitting on lovely seats the driver’s seat alone has the ergo motion massaging feature it would be nice if the passenger seat had that as well rather than being treated like a second-class citizen they fixed that issue in the gv80 but not yet the g80 the driver’s seat also
Has adjustment for the side bolsters which is great so you can really get into an awesome driving position nice and low in the car with a good view out there is some storage cup holders here while a smartphone charging fast charging old style usb ports flock lining in this space between the seats and decent sized door bins as well but because the g80 isn’t on a
Dedicated electric vehicle platform you don’t get packaging benefits that you do in some evs like a completely flat floor here up front liberating more storage space and because the car has that solar roof it doesn’t get a sunroof but the headliner is this beautiful suede but while the front seat of the g80 is more than pleasant enough i get a strong sense that this
Car is more about those traveling in the back seat it feels purpose-built to me to be a vehicle to drive passengers in as part of a very eco-conscious fleet for executive transport and for that purpose the electrified g80 is quite good but it’s not without issue now the seats back here are finished in the same beautifully soft leather everything looks absolutely
Great but because the floor of the vehicle has to sit a little bit higher to accommodate that very large battery if you have the driver’s seat set to its lower setting your toes don’t have all that much space to shift here in the back so you’d need to ask jeeves up front to pump up that seat so that your legs have sufficient support but that’s no issue really and
In terms of amenities back here it’s really lovely we’ve got air vents we’ve got separate climate controls and then we have this trick the command center back here we can drive the infotainment system presented through these relatively modestly sized tablets that are standard fit in the back through another jog dial wheel here and we’ve got heating for the rear
Seats but not cooling as you get up front however those in the back can control the programming and the volume which is always nice there’s additional storage in here headphone sockets and another usb port however it would be very cool to see car makers start to introduce airplay technology so you could beam videos from your iphone or the corresponding android
Software to these tablets so you can have a nice posture as you get driven between sydney and canberra for the federal budget for instance the materials remain really nice back here and you can block people and the sun out with these retractable sun shades so what’s the genesis electrified g80 like to drive well in some ways it’s the best g80 and that comes down
To the absolute smoothness and slickness of the dual motors that stand in for a combustion engine in this vehicle the three and a half liter turbocharged v6 that used to be the top end powertrain for the g80 is a really nice motor powerful punchy and it sounds good under throttle but no combustion engine can hold a candle to the smoothness of the electric motors
That the hyundai motor company uses in its vehicles including the g80 now this vehicle is dual motor one motor on each axle making it all-wheel drive and very powerful 272 kilowatts of power and 700 newton meters of torque are this vehicle’s outputs and as deputy editor kurt dupre said when he drove this car some months ago it may not actually need that much power
And in future i’d love to see genesis introduce a rear-wheel drive version of the electrifier g80 because frankly the sedate nature of this car means that it probably doesn’t need the absolutely crazy punch available underfoot from the 700 newton meters of torque that also consume more energy that being said the car is still more efficient than many of its rivals
Including vehicles like the mercedes eqs which isn’t actually very frugal this car is now when it comes to ride and handling swapping out a combustion engine and replacing it with dual motors and a large 87 kilowatt-hour battery fundamentally changes the way a vehicle proceeds down the road and it’s a huge difference to the load placed on the suspension which
Has been completely retuned for the electrified g80 however i’m not completely convinced that the final choices of suspension are perfect for this car there are two modes that you can drive the vehicle in that affect the suspension which is an adaptive setup informed by the forward-facing camera in comfort mode the vehicle maintains some of the suppleness that
We remember from the combustion powered g80 but there’s a feeling of significant unsprung mass in this vehicle as it kind of clumps into bumps and you feel the inertia of the battery pack as that transition in the suspension occurs so the body control could be stronger in the softer mode thankfully when you change the suspension into its sport setting the body
Control is quickly brought under control but there is additional stiffness to the ride that takes away some of the luxury feeling of the vehicle now it’s by no means a deal breaker and i think the electrifier g80 is comfortable enough but this speaks to the significant problem that suspension engineers have with electric vehicles these cars are really heavy and
They have both heavy sprung mouths and unsprung mass and getting them to ride as well as the best combustion vehicles is genuinely difficult and in my view really only porsche has achieved that with the taikon and you can bet that he and d have ripped apart a few of those when designing their genesis vehicles both this g80 and the future cars that they’ve got in
A pipeline the steering though continues to be quite lovely it’s not the last word in feel but the ratio is good the feedback is okay and there’s a nice direct feeling in the car and the tires are excellent too being michelin pilot sport 4 as standard and because the wheels are sensibly sized at 19 inch there’s a decent amount of sidewall there to round off the
Kind of square edges that we get here in sydney very commonly refinement is also excellent when it comes to safety we’ve got the great blind spot monitoring cameras that we like from genesis smooth adaptive cruise control and strong lane centering that makes the car less fatiguing to drive on the highway and because it’s fully specified there’s only one model
And the only option is matte paint you get things like reversing aeb as standard on the electrified g80 while genesis has been great to put the electrified g80 on an 800 volt architecture the car does lack the seamlessness of the brand’s dedicated gv60ev and cars like the hyundai ionic 5 and kia ev6 which have beautifully tuned one pedal driving and regenerative
Braking the g80s brake pedal feel by contrast and its one pedal setting are just not quite as seamless as there’s a slightly odd brake pressure feel to the car that you have to kind of learn to drive around but i’m sure you would and equally adding a very considerable amount of weight to the g80 has changed the sort of supple way the vehicle tended to ride before
I didn’t love either of the damper settings but i ended up settling on driving the car in sport because the body control was vastly superior so those are my impressions of the new genesis electrified g80 i can definitely see a market for this vehicle and i think that market is if you operate a fleet of vehicles to drive people and you want to get your company
To zero emissions and that means buying a fleet of electric vehicles to replace what might be today petrol diesel or hybrid cars because the g80 is a truly luxurious experience particularly when you’re sitting in the back of it as a driver’s car it’s decent enough but i think the market for this kind of car is for people that need to drive around executives that
Can’t be seen to be driven in a petrol or diesel car any longer and very soon that’s going to be the chief executive officers and senior employees of every big bank and big organization in the country and genesis is ahead of the curve in that regard so those are my opinions i’m very keen to know yours let me know down below this video in the comments while you’re
There hit subscribe hit the notification bell and as always thank thank you for watching chasing cars
Transcribed from video
This EV Costs $45K More Than The V6! (Genesis G80 EV 2023 Review) By Chasing Cars