GENESIS TO PRESS THE RESET BUTTON IN 2025
Hyundai-owned premium brand is going EV-only as its first customers’ cars come up for renewal
Genesis is gearing up for what will be a pivotal year in the UK, as it ends sales of new pure-combustion cars and repositions itself following a turbulent four years since launching here.
The Hyundai-owned Korean premium brand has sold just 3700 cars in the UK to date. That’s 6000 fewer than DS – a brand of a similar positioning and age and in a similar state of flux – sold over the same period.
What’s more, Polestar, a rival firm that was launched a year earlier, has sold nearly 10 times as many cars – and with a single model. With the petroland diesel-engined G70, GV70 and GV80 models now available from stock only and future hybrid models promised but with no arrival date yet confirmed, Genesis is effectively going electric-only here for the foreseeable future. All of its EVs are due to be refreshed this year and new ones, such as the GV60 Magma, will follow as part of a renewed EV push. Although the decision was almost certainly made due to those ICE models’ poor sales compared with their electric counterparts (EVs have accounted for more than two-thirds of Genesis’s total UK sales), it comes at a particularly challenging moment for the brand, as many of its early adopters’ finance and lease deals come up for renewal. “Every one of our sales, even today, is a conquest,” Jonny Miller, brand director at Genesis Motor UK, told Autocar.