Test-driving an electric car and truly living with one can be two very different things. The first scenario gives you a good understanding of how the car drives, how it looks, and what the performance and day-to-day practicality are like.
But only when you’ve spent some serious time with an EV do you fully get under its skin. This is when you learn all about the car’s real-world range, how quickly it charges, and how it performs when presented with all of the tasks of everyday life. How does it manage with a big supermarket shop? Is it easy to drive through city traffic? Do the active safety systems benefit the driver or annoy them? And how much does the range fall in cold weather?
To find out, I’ve been driving a Genesis GV60 for the past couple of months. The car arrived in August and will be in my possession until February, and in that time I’ll be using it as my daily driver. Two months in, here’s how I’ve got on.
What it’s really like to spend two months driving Genesis GV60
Setup and biometric security
Cars are more complicated than ever before. Even at the very bottom of the market, regulation dictates they must have a digital display and at least some forms of active safety system such as a visual and audible warning when the speed limit is exceeded.
Head up-market and when you reach cars like the Genesis GV60, which is priced from about £54,000 to £67,000, there’s an awful lot to get your head around, even before you start driving.
This is especially true with the 2024 model year GV60, because it now has biometric security. Similar to that of your smartphone, the car has a face-recognition camera on the outside and a fingerprint reader on the inside. The first recognises its owner, then unlocks the door, while a positive scan of the second lets you start the car and drive away. This is all optional, but serves as a good demonstration of how much tech today’s cars now have.
I’ve used the system a few times and, while it works pretty well and feels a bit like living in the future, it’s much slower than the FaceID of – which is handy, since that system frequently reads speed signs incorrectly and wrongly warns about breaking the limit. This is a problem shared with almost every car on sale today.
Charging at home
Unlike around 40 per cent of the UK, I’m fortunate enough to have off-street parking. However, our flat does not currently have a car charger installed. I can still charge the GV60 at home, but this means using the included cable that plugs the car into a regular three-pin wall outlet.
While this powers all domestic appliances just fine, it only provides about 1 kW of power to the car, which is between seven and 11 times less than what would be possible from a home EV charger. A full charge would take several days, so unless it’s a real emergency this isn’t an option for me.
Charging at public charge stations
The above means I have to use public chargers, and these are often expensive. There’s a charger attached to a lamppost right outside my flat, which costs between 40p and 61p per kWh and charges at 5 kW. That makes a full charge between about £30 and £45, depending on the time of day, as the lower rate is between midnight and 7am. I recently topped up from 20 to 100 per cent using this charger; it took about 13 hours and cost £32.50, with only the last few hours taking advantage of the discounted nighttime rate.
My local fast charger fills at up to 150 kW, which is handy because the Genesis can accept energy at up to 239 kW. But at 79p per kWh a full charge would be about £60.
By comparison, a full charge of the GV60’s 77 kWh battery using a home charger and the E.ON Next Drive energy tariff would cost about £5 – a massive saving on all public options. All this emphasises just how vital a home charger and a low-price energy tariff are when it comes to running an EV in a cost-effective way.
A home charger also unlocks huge convenience, since there‘s occasionally a queue at my local fast charger, and the lamppost chargers are often blocked (entirely legally, it must be said) by non-EVs, since they are on a street with no parking restrictions.
Pros so far
Cons so far
Genesis GV60 verdict so far
I’ve enjoyed my first two months with the GV60. It has highlighted how much the public charge network has improved in recent years, and serves as a reminder of the benefits of rapid charging. I also like the interior, which falls just the right side of quirky and is full of physical, tactile controls. The large mirror controls are temperature toggles are particularly good, since they can be used quickly and intuitively – and, most importantly, without looking away from the road.
I’m not quite sold on the biometric tech just yet. But hopefully my views will change once I’ve learnt exactly where to stand for the face-scanner to work first time. As we head into the winter I’m keen to see how the GV60 copes with colder weather, and how much its circa-240 miles of range will be affected.
