2024 Genesis GV70 Reviews, Pricing & Specs

The GV70 stands out both within the Genesis lineup and within its competitive set.

Certain Genesis styling features—such as the split headlights and large shield-like grille—carry over for brand-recognition purposes. But the GV70 is also much sleeker than its larger sibling, the Genesis GV80, without resorting to the excessive quirkiness of the smaller GV60. And it has some standout details, including an almost hatchback-like rear window profile, large round exhaust outlets on the gasoline-powered Sport trim level, and distinctive designs for the available 21-inch wheels (19-inch wheels are standard).

The GV70 also hits the sweet spot between SUV size and presence and luxury-car style. Competitors like the Audi Q5 and BMW X3 look puffed up and tough, but they lack finesse. The Porsche Macan tries to stretch styling cues from that brand’s cars over SUV proportions. And the Mercedes-Benz GLC relies on the three-pointed star in its grille for prestige. The GV70’s styling does a much better job of selling this vehicle as both an SUV and the product of a luxury brand.

The Electrified GV70, which was selected as the 2024 Canadian Electric Utility Vehicle of the Year, is also a good choice for shoppers who want an EV that flies under the radar. While the shiny grille could double as a disco ball, the rest of the styling is unchanged from gasoline GV70 models. And that glitzy grille also houses the charge port, which comes in handy when pulling into charging stations. Most of the time, you can just pull straight in as you would at a normal parking spot. That’s not the case with most other EVs, which often have charge ports in the front fenders or where a fuel filler would normally be located. This often requires careful positioning to ensure the vehicle is within reach of a charge cable.

The interior is one of the most distinctive of any new vehicle. It still has the traditional luxury touches—such as available quilted Nappa leather upholstery and a panoramic sunroof—but what really makes it memorable are the details. The climate controls and other buttons and knobs are housed in an elliptical pod. The infotainment system features a rotary controller that looks like it was designed by one of the lesser-known alien species from Star Trek. And the entire dashboard has a rounded cross-section, a bit like an airplane wing. Things like this are subjective, but it’s nice that Genesis tried to do something different.

The GV70's powertrain options are unchanged for 2024. The gasoline GV70 comes standard with a 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder engine that produces 300 horsepower and 311 pound-feet of torque on premium fuel. A 3.5-litre twin-turbo V6 is also available, with 375 hp and 391 lb-ft. Both gasoline engines are teamed with an eight-speed automatic transmission and standard all-wheel drive (AWD).

The Electrified GV70 also gets standard AWD, in this case courtesy of front and rear electric motors that produce a combined 429 hp and 516 lb-ft of torque and are fed by a 77.4-kilowatt-hour battery pack. A “Boost Mode” provides 483 hp for 10 seconds at a time.

Luxury brands tend to emphasize either a sporty driving experience or sensory-deprivation-tank levels of comfort, but the GV70 doesn’t quite excel at either. Engage Boost Mode in the Electrified GV70 or Sport+ mode in a twin-turbo V6 model and you get the vigorous straight-line acceleration that the specs suggest. But the chassis tuning isn’t on the same wavelength. The GV70 feels bigger, heavier, and slower through corners than its sportiest rivals—like the Acura RDX, BMW X3, or Porsche Macan.

The GV70 is also reasonably comfortable, but its suspension tends to crash down on bumps and road imperfections rather than float over them. Where most other aspects of the GV70 transcend its lower-tier status, the ride quality is pretty much exactly what you’d expect from an SUV that isn’t the cheapest in the Genesis lineup, but not the most expensive either.

These qualities carry over from the gasoline GV70 to the Electrified model; it’s competent, but not sporty or graceful. To its credit though, the Electrified model doesn’t feel more ungainly than the gasoline version despite the lightest version weighing 200 kilograms (441 pounds) more than the heaviest gasoline GV70 model.

The Electrified GV70 also has handy steering-wheel paddles to adjust regenerative braking, letting drivers switch from minimum regen that approximates the feel of driving a gasoline car to a high level of regen that allows for true one-pedal driving. If you can sort charging and live with its Natural Resources Canada-rated 380-kilometre range, there’s also no downside to choos

The GV70 offers comparable interior space to its rivals. It has slightly less headroom than the Audi Q5, BMW X3, and Mercedes-Benz GLC, but the small difference is not bad considering the Genesis’s more streamlined roofline. The Genesis also has a fraction more front-seat legroom than the BMW and Mercedes, and a fraction less than the Audi. Second-row legroom differences are also small, but the GV70 does offer a smidge more than the X3, and a tiny bit less than the Q5 and GLC.

The Genesis’ 818 litres of cargo space with its rear seats in place is substantially better than the Mercedes’ 620 litres, slightly better than the BMW’s 812 litres, but less than the Audi’s 835 litres. Fold the rear seats and you get 1,611 litres—less than any of the Germans.

Genesis engineers also had to find room for a battery pack in the Electrified GV70, but that didn’t impact interior space much. First-row legroom is unchanged, second-row legroom shrinks by 15 millimetres, and headroom is down 25 mm and 20 mm in the first and second rows, respectively. The difference in cargo space between the gasoline and electric models is less than 30 litres with the rear seats up or down.

All GV70 models pay a price for their stylish interior design, however. The orb-like infotainment controller, rotary shifter, and curvaceous dashboard don’t leave much room for small-item storage. A dedicated phone storage nook is included, however, along with rear-seat climate controls.

Our Electrified GV70 test car was also equipped with automatic side bolsters for the front seats. In Sport mode, these automatically close under strong acceleration or cornering to hold occupants in place more securely. Genesis isn’t the only automaker to offer this feature (it’s common on Mercedes-AMG performance cars, for example), but it’s unusual in this price range.

The Genesis infotainment system borrows heavily from the Hyundai parts bin, so it’s not as elaborate as the systems available in the rival BMW X3 or Mercedes-Benz GLC. But sometimes simpler is better.

All GV70 models come standard with a 14.5-inch touchscreen and wired Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity. Lower trim levels get an 8-inch digital instrument cluster, while higher grades get a 12.3-inch unit with a cool 3D effect that will trigger nostalgic tingles in anyone who grew up in the 1990s. A 12-inch head-up display is also available, along with a 16-speaker Lexicon audio system.

All of this is fairly easy to use. The touchscreen has an intuitive layout with large tiles for each function, and it’s positioned so that both the driver and front-seat passenger can reach it without a problem. Alternatively, you can use the rotary controller on the centre console. It has a higher-quality feel than the controllers for BMW’s iDrive and Mercedes’s MBUX systems.

Genesis also includes a fingerprint scanner that can cue up individual driver profiles. Unfortunately, Genesis digital key functionality is currently only available on the G70 sedan as of 2024 and hasn’t yet found its way to the GV70 in Canada.

Gasoline versions of the 2024 Genesis GV70 received the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s (IIHS) highest Top Safety Pick+ award. The Electrified GV70 received the same award as a 2023 model.

Complete 2024-model-year ratings from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) were not available at the time of publication. The agency did publish four-star frontal and rollover crash-test ratings for gasoline 2024 GV70 models, though, and the identical 2023 GV70 received a five-star overall safety rating. The NHTSA hasn’t published any ratings for the Electrified GV70, however.

Electric or not, all GV70 models come with the expected array of safety features. The list of standard features include: lane-keep assist, forward-collision warning, forward collision-warning, automatic emergency braking, rear cross-traffic alert, a driver-attention monitor, parking assist sensors, and Highway Driving Assist. The latter combines adaptive cruise control with automated lane centring for, as the name states, highway driving.

A more sophisticated Highway Driving Assist 2 system is also available, adding automated lane-change capability as well as blind-spot monitoring. Even this system still requires drivers to keep their hands on wheel although, to be fair, that’s also the case with most of the systems available in the GV70’s competitors. The exception is the hands-free BlueCruise system available in the Lincoln Corsair.

Genesis also offers some high-tech safety features for when you’ve reached your destination. A safe exit assist function aims to prevent occupants from exiting the vehicle into the path of oncoming traffic. And while many automakers offer rear occupant alert systems, Genesis’s version uses radar sensitive enough to detect the breathing of children or pets.

The most fuel-efficient 2024 Genesis GV70 models are those with the base turbo-four engine and 19-inch wheels. They’re rated at 10.5 litres per 100 kilometres combined (11.7 city, 9.0 highway). Opting for models with the twin-turbo V6 engine means burning 11.6 L/100 km combined (12.9 city, 10.0 highway).

The Genesis Electrified GV70 is rated at an adequate 380 kilometres of range, but our observed 4.2 kilometres per kWh energy-consumption average indicates that the rated range might be hard to achieve in the real world. Very fast charging is at least possible, thanks to an 800-volt electrical architecture. This allows for DC fast charging at up to 350 kilowatts, which can take the battery from 10% to 80% capacity in 18 minutes. A full recharge takes about seven hours using a 240-volt Level 2 AC home charger.

In Canada, Genesis pricing is all-in, no-haggle, and includes all destination charges and fees. It also includes five years/100,000 km of comprehensive warranty, scheduled maintenance, at-home concierge service for test drives, purchasing, and service appointments, and map updates.

Pricing starts at $60,000 for the base GV70 2.5T Advanced model. The 2.5T is also available in Advanced Plus ($64,000) and Prestige ($68,500) grades. The V6-powered GV70 3.5T Sport starts at $73,500; Sport Plus ($78,000) and Sport Plus with an electronic limited-slip differential ($79,000) are also available. This pricing scheme puts the gasoline GV70 in the heart of the luxury compact SUV segment.

The Electrified GV70 is offered in Canada in a single trim, priced at $84,500. That makes the Electrified version the most expensive GV70, although once you’ve ticked that box there really isn’t anything else to add (our test car’s only option was Capri Blue paint). Unfortunately, that’s too rich for the Genesis Electrified GV70 to qualify for federal or provincial EV purchase rebates.

Note: Images show a US model.