Genesis Built a 657-HP Living Room and Pointed It At Rolls-Royce

Let me say up front that a heated wood floor in an SUV is not something I've ever laid awake wanting.

And I still can't quit looking at this thing.

Genesis pulled the covers off the GV90, their new full-size electric flagship, plus a fancier version called the Neolun. Korea just walked into the room where Rolls-Royce and Bentley have been sitting comfortable for about a hundred years and set something down on the table.

The numbers

One motor per axle, 657 horsepower, 590 lb-ft. A 123.5-kWh battery, the biggest Hyundai Motor Group has ever put in anything. Genesis says the seven-seater does about 311 miles on a charge in their US testing, and it'll go from 10 to 80 percent in 22 minutes on a 350-kW charger. That's a big battery filling up fast.

It rides on a brand-new platform they're calling eMP, with air suspension and rear-wheel steering that turns up to five degrees. It's 208 inches long on a 127.8-inch wheelbase. That wheelbase is longer than a BMW X7 and within a couple inches of a Rolls-Royce Cullinan. Twenty-four inch wheels are standard on the Neolun.

The doors are the whole story

The Neolun gets coach doors with no B-pillar. Genesis calls the setup the Neolun Arch Gate, and they say it's the first one where the rear doors open and close on their own without waiting on the front door. New dual-motion hinge that slides the door out a hair and then swings it. Open both sides and the hole you're stepping through is enormous.

Here's what actually impressed me, and it's got nothing to do with the leather. When you delete a B-pillar you delete a big piece of the car's structure, so Genesis had to put that strength back somewhere else. They ran high-strength dual steel beams where the pillar used to be, then reinforced the cabin frame to about one and a half times the usual thickness and packed it out with high-strength steel tube and structural foam. Basically a roll cage you can't see. They say it crashes like a car with a normal B-pillar.

That's real work. Anybody can hang a fancy door on a car. Making the body survive without the pillar is the hard part, and that's the kind of thing I respect no matter what badge is on the hood.

They also went a little wild on safety elsewhere. Twelve airbags, including one Genesis claims is a first: an airbag that deploys across the whole glass roof if the thing rolls.

And then the silly stuff

Semi-aniline leather, cashmere, real stone trim, a fridge in the center console, swiveling front seats so you can turn around and talk to whoever's back there. The First Edition drops to four seats and gets real wood veneer floors with heat running through them.

The center screen measures 23.6 inches while you're driving and physically rises to 24.6 when you park, which works out to about 1.7 times the screen area. There's a 25-inch head-up display instead of a gauge cluster and a 25-speaker Bang & Olufsen system that'll fake the acoustics of concert halls. No start button either. You pull the handle, the door shuts itself, and the shifter rotates down the steering column toward you.

Sixteen paint colors at launch, three of them matte.

The Monkey take

It's targeted for the first half of 2027 and nobody's talking price yet, but nothing about this says cheap. Would I daily one? No. I like a car where I can hear the engine and feel what the tires are doing.

But you don't have to want a car to respect how it got built. Genesis has been on an absolute tear the last few years, and this is a company that decided it wasn't going to be anybody's value option anymore. Detroit ought to be paying attention.

Source: Jalopnik's first look at the GV90 and GV90 Neolun, opens in a new tab.

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