‘I drove Scottish Car of the Year and couldn’t believe what it had on dashboard’

EXCLUSIVE: Last month Christopher Sharp went to Worcestershire and drove an award-winning SUV that won an award at a ceremony in Scotland last year

There are a lot of electric cars on sale in the UK at the moment and the rising cost of petrol and diesel is only making them more attractive. While extra choice is good for the consumer, it also means choosing what electric car to go for can be a bit tricky.

However, if you have a large budget there are plenty of options available to you with almost every premium car maker offering at least one electric SUV offering. Korean company Genesis is one of them and at SMMT’s DriveLive event in September, I had the opportunity to drive an electric version of its GV70 SUV. It was named Premium Car of the Year at the 2025 Scottish Car of the Year Awards.

The looks

I know one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, and I won’t; but a car’s bodywork is its cover. Cars aren’t just washing machines, they’re meant to be things we want as well as things we need.

On that front the GV70 is a handsome car. It’s got a unique design language which we’ve seen since the days of its Red Bull F1 sponsorship in the 2010s.

There are no gratuitous bulges and the space where the grill would go is tastefully filled in with a ‘mesh effect’. The headlines also have a nice split line which we also see on their Le Mans hypercar.

The numbers

It’s an electric SUV with an RRP (Recommended Retail Price) of £66,815, but prices can rise as high as £77,215 which puts it much closer to Range Rover territory. According to official tests, it should have a range of around 287 to 298 miles on an 84 kWh battery pack that can be charged at up to 350kW on AC and DC charging.

The car itself weighs just under 2.4 tonnes, is 4.7 metres long, 1.9 metres wide, and around 1.6 metres in height. It has a 503 litre boot with the seats up and 1,678 litres with them folded flat. It is all wheel drive and can pull 1.8 tonnes if you have to.

The interior

The car I drove at SMMT’s event just near Worcester, England, had a very bright white interior. With the other attendees in mind, and being a dyspraxic, I decided to leave the unlidded coffee outside the car. Joking aside, it was a premium feeling place to be with soft and firm leather in front and wide but narrow digital screen ahead of you.

In front of it were a few haptic touchpad controls for controlling the aircon and stereo. In front of those are a pair of cupholders and to the right of those are a couple of dials in case you don’t want to use the touchscreen.

The steering wheel is nice, round, and thick, with a few knobs and switches here for manual manipulation of the digital screen in front of you, which shows your speed, regenerative braking, and, oddly, the golf scores. This didn’t appear to be unique to the car I was in as other reviewers have spotted this quirk in the past; it is part of Genesis Connected Services that provides the information. Useful if you’re into sports, not so much if you aren’t.

On the road

The GV70 acts on the road as it looks. The car’s aesthetics are pleasant and inoffensive and so too are its driving manners. The car is not light, but does not attempt to hide that lightness by trying to be sporty. It is clear this is trying to be a family SUV, not a track weapon.

The steering has some feel, but a little of the numbness that is common in an awful lot of cars at the moment. You can feel what is going on through your hands enough to not feel you’re being left out of the picture.

The suspension, again, is soft, your bottom does get some information about the road coming through it, but it’s an otherwise comfortable place to make your way through the Worcestershire countryside.

What lets the car down is a lack of headroom in the back and the fact it should ideally be able to get a little bit further; if 298 miles is your best estimate on paper without a car full of people and gear then you have to estimate that’ll be lower.

Verdict

The electric GV70 is not a bad car but of the premium SUVs out there I would probably go for a hybrid version of a different car, which means it’s just not the car I’d choose. Instead, it had to be an SUV, I’d go for the hybrid Hyundai Santa Fe. The range again, is an issue, even if it isn’t the worst in its class. In the end, I think it’s a car which, if people like, they’ll love; if they don’t, they’ll just buy something else.

Christopher’s Rating: 6.5/10

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