After the recent hubbub around here about Genesis vehicles, I recently found myself choosing between a BMW X5 and a Genesis GV80. I chose the GV80 because it had Hyundai's solid adaptive cruise control with lane centering, while the BMW didn't have either.


I had driven a GV80 a couple years ago and found it to be a nicer version of the Hyundai Palisade or Santa Fe, both of which are pleasant.

Mine appeared to be a base trim which had the driver assistance features I mentioned and heated seats, but no sunroof, cooled seats, heated wheel, or upgraded audio system.

The dashboard looks nice and uses the stretched screen system all the car makers are adopting. The infotainment has been updated over the regular Hyundai system and uses a touch screen or a scroll wheel. The controls underneath the screen are all capacitive and the climate controls are on a touch screen. I hate that. Why do car makers insist on eliminating buttons?

The gear shifter is the standard Genesis glass wheel. It is easy to confuse with the infotainment controller. And the volume knob is separate from the infotainment controller. I frequently found myself searching for the volume knob since it wasn't where I was expecting it to be.

Ride quality was very pleasant over 1,000 miles of straight interstate. I didn't feel fatigued and the ACC system worked well. It will allow you to take your hands off the wheel for 15-20 seconds at a time. All you have to do is touch the wheel and the timer resets. The ACC behavior can be tuned in terms of reaction time and acceleration rate. That is a welcome feature, especially since I have driven many ACC vehicles which brake hard whenever someone unexpectedly cuts in front. The GV80 handled it much more gracefully.

However, the driver assistance system was very annoying in that it has a camera behind the steering wheel watching your eyes. If I put my hand at the top of the wheel, which is technically bad form but very common, it would beep that the camera was blocked and automatically turn off cruise control. It drove me crazy.

Gas mileage was disappointing. I got between 17-20 mpg driving 80+ most of the way. It did get closer to 23-24 mpg during the brief periods when I was traversing a metro area and speed limits dropped. Performance was lackluster too. It had enough pep to pass someone on the highway easily enough but it wasn't exactly sporty. Had I known it would perform so poorly, I would have chosen an Expedition instead.

While I have found the GV70 to be an excellent vehicle, the GV80 was rather disappointing in terms of lack of features, annoying rules about driver assistance, and poor gas mileage. I would drive one again, but there are definitely some cheaper vehicles which I would choose over it next time.