We review the new 2023 Flagship Genesis G90, and car that in the past felt like a knock-off luxury car. This generation brings more technology and mechanical know-how to push the brand forward, and for around $100,000, it works on almost every level. With the Sedan falling out of favor for SUVs, this car may fly under the radar. Others to consider are BMW 7 Series, Mercedes S Class, Lexus LS, and Audi A8.
The 2023 genesis g90 if you watch any of my videos you know for certain that i’m hard on hyundai kia and genesis as a brand i feel like they’re constantly searching for their identity and with the last g80 i drove the sport i thought man they are 90 here it was one of the best cars they ever made and this is just a further extension of it yes there are some
Gimmicks and some things that are just asinine and stupid and other things that are just amazing this is like a 90th percentile car so i’m going to get into the negatives first the door handle design unlike a bmw when you have the key in your pocket the proximity detection essentially knows when you’re in the room and unlocks the doors it lights up this car it
Seems to be flaky and you have to wait for the door handles to come out because they’re embedded in the door super slow things like the trunk the trunk is pretty small for a car of this size i know they they prioritize the back seat space but again it’s it’s a big deal if you’re packing a lot of luggage in this car has the soft closed doors and then of course
Of course the automatic opening doors to a certain point and then it automatically closes and i think that is a very gimmicky feature but also has a cool factor you can see it kind of pops the door open here but it doesn’t open all the way and then you have to kind of push it’s got that motorized sound and feel to it that is pretty much where the gimmicks end
In my approximation because when you really start using this car you’re like damn look at these materials like the laser etched at what looks like cms csmc’s in the door but i know it’s some type of other material the leatherwork the brightworks and the switches everything has a heft to it the aluminum or the alloy grilles for the speakers which feel very very
Well designed it all the fit and finish of all the panels is great in here the stitching doesn’t look cheesy and when you look at the overall dashboard and the technology layout the center gauge cluster the screen is you know essentially what you need to see the viewing angle is good the brightness and contrast is good and the infotainment is probably their
Best implementation ever it’s clean it looks elegant it’s not gimmicky or cheesy everything looks great in here and my favorite part is almost every single control that you need to use is physical with the exception of like of course the the copy and paste thing they did with the mercedes here with the blackberry control which you barely use but like the center
Console where the shifter is all physical brushed aluminum here even the infotainment command knob it’s all metal it has a heft to it and then they use screens like for the hvac that are augmented with physical controls just an amazing design the roof is all covered in a microfiber suede there’s noise canceling microphones all over the place and then the back seat
Of course is where you’re going to spend most of your time if you’re buying a car like this the passenger side rear reclines with an ottoman and the infotainment in the back controls pretty much the entire car and the the interface in the back is unbelievably good there’s little details like turning on your massager back there and you can adjust the uh roof line
Lighting or the the lighting on the inside of the car to to change it from cold color temperature like 5500k if you like a bluer interior light or like a warmer color temperature down to like 3200 cape and then of course there’s ambient lighting on top of that i mean it’s just such an amazing space to be in on just aside from all that it’s one of the quietest
Cars you’re ever going to get in as well seat adjustability everything you want from a luxury car is top tier including the audio system we’re going to talk about some of the technical details in the shop now so let’s do it all right jack the g90 and many people think that we’ve given hyundai and genesis a bad rap recently and that may be true in some of the
Videos however when we did the g80 sport the new version i said this was that was like the best car that that this company has ever made and when you look at the the body structure which is what we’re doing now this is on the same platform as the g80 only extended out the big difference here is typically hyundai engineering and their management has said they
Don’t want to over complicate things so they didn’t want to add all these insane like uh electromechanical systems that like the germans do to jack the price up and all that but the g90 is a showcase piece for doing that finally so you’re getting this technology we don’t typically see in their suvs the g80 and now they’ve added it here so we’re going to talk
You through why this thing is special and the things that they’ve done well in some of the things they’ve done that nobody else has done and some of the things that they’re adopting for the first time and at face value when you look at all the stuff underneath the car and you look at the price you are getting a lot of car for your money mind you this is still
An expensive vehicle yeah the very we are underneath with all the options is about a hundred thousand dollars when you look at the suspension components much like the german counterparts everything is aluminum both the front and rear subframes are aluminum most of the primary control arms are aluminum as well this car has rear steer and it has adaptive dampers
The adaptive air ride equipped dampers they call preview electronic control suspension so each of the individual air bladders for those shocks can be controlled to soften or stiffen up the ride accordingly and the preview function comes from checking gps data and the front-facing camera so it will pre-load or change the ride height of the front of the suspension
Of this vehicle up to five millimeters when it sees a bump in the road and on top of that if it encounters really bumpy roads or big bumps it will raise the suspension both front and rear by 25 millimeters both to soften up the ride and protect the undercarriage of the vehicle when you’re on a decline so you’re leaving a gas station or a restaurant or like a
Drive-through will also raise the suspension to save the front end of the vehicle automatically and this is all connected as well as how how the air springs work and how it stiffens and softens is also connected to drive modes and this g90 is definitely the the extreme end of all their cars because it has an ultra soft mode called chauffeur mode uh and the the
Big thing about this is hyundai and kia have never used air springs before air suspension so this is really the first showcase of this and it’s all done in-house it’s all mobus parts it’s not outsourced to like zf like the german manufacturers are acura and even when you compare this to the lexus ls which is lexus flagship this annihilates that from a technology
Perspective again like you said this is all aluminum or the lexus ls is not this also incorporates which we saw when the these cars first came out the aluminum subframe and there had spots for rear steer this also adds rear steer to it because it’s a long wheelbase car it has it makes it feel way more nimble and what’s the actual specifications so it will change
In low speed corners it will you it will turn up to four degrees in the opposite direction so it will turn in the opposite direction of the front wheels to decrease the turning radius and high speed corners for extra stability or high speed turns so you’re on the autobahn or something or on i80 doing 90 miles an hour it will turn in the same direction up to two
Degrees so it should add a little bit more stability at high speeds and the other part too of creating a luxury boat like this is you see this on every car right everything is covered up here as much as possible and there is an insane amount of research and development that went into reducing the the road noise and wind noise to this car so there’s aerodynamic
Treatments there’s these covers there is laminated glass in the rear windows as well as the front which you typically don’t see and here’s the magic jack this is the first system that they’ve acoustically tuned the cabin to reduce road noise from 20 hertz to 500 hertz so they took acoustic calibrated microphones and dummy heads and put on the interior and they
Tuned the dsps in the audio system to measure road noise from every single tire through the cabin and they can real time send inverted waveforms to neutralize 20 to 500 hertz tones to what it does to the ears is it sounds like it drops the noise floor it lowers the noise floor of the cabin by like 10 decibels up to that point in those frequency ranges so what
You’re what you’re hearing what it’s tuning out is all the time all the noise that goes through the tires into the body of the car so combined with the acoustic laminated glass which reduces wind noise which is usually what most car companies deal with and like this stuff they’re actually reducing tire noise and road noise through this acoustic system so that’s
Partly why genesis and it even the cars that don’t have this genesis has always been one of the most quiet cars even compared to s-class it’s incredible how much they’ve been able to reduce the unwanted turbulence from the outside environment and that’s what makes this special you can kind of laugh at it it’s a big boat a lot of us don’t buy these huge luxury
Sedans but at a hundred thousand dollars for what you’re getting here it is really really everything as quiet as something like the modern s-class absolutely and then the last thing is the 3.5 liter which is a carryover twin-turbo v6 that we’ve seen is adding port and direct injection there’s a whole bunch of things that they’ve done to this system like putting
The direct injection in the center part of the cylinder there’s a whole bunch of efficiency things that does the reason they’re doing important direct injection on this motor is because the di engines tend to tend to make more rattly type lower noise it was rougher at lower rpms so adding the dual injection there smooths it out gives it lower lower noise of
Course transmission and then of course fuel economy and emissions they’re able to control that better and it’s smoother overall in terms of performance the big story is they’ve added a 48 volt system here with around a 9 kilowatt hour battery lithium ion battery pack to supply this with around 45 more horsepower from the integrated starter generator to give it
That more electric feel more torque and power from the regular v6 and that’s that’s the big change with this engine and this is kind of they’re saying this is the apex of internal combustion so this will likely be their last like iteration of this before they go to full plug-in hybrid and all like we’re seeing with the g80 with electrified version so this is kind
Of the last stand for this to be clear the electric supercharger is not standard on this car it is the more powerful more expensive drivetrain option and if you’re watching this you’re like why do i care this is a g90 this is a hundred thousand dollar hyundai like a hyundai kia product the one thing i will say about this brand and we bring it up all the time is
This is a entirely vertically integrated company they control every aspect of their supply chain other than tires yeah right and a couple other bits and bobs which hopefully means and why this is relevant is this technology because it’s a flagship product will start to trickle down to cheaper models and hopefully improve the entire hyundai and keel lineup now
That you have a better understanding of some of this technology there’s a lot more than that but let’s get this on the road and see how it translates jack all right i’m setting off in the brand new g90 as i talked about in the interior in the shop there is a lot to this car a lot to like so with that said i need to take off and show fur mode so there’s
A there’s a lot to like about the driving experience if all you care about is one thing and that is floating around like you’re on a boat if you’re in chauffeur mode it gets comically soft to the point where the suspension feels like all it has is compression so when you get on bad bumps or sudden impacts it just feels like more trampoline like and i found
On almost 90 percent of surfaces it’s amazing including comfort mode but when you hit really bad payment i prefer the suspension in sport mode i think it does a better job driving and riding and handling most payment conditions without still feeling really soft but not feeling as choppy so when we get into things like well transmission programming and this is
Something i constantly give hyundai and kia and genesis a hard time about the transmission programming here is still a little bit lazy if you switch it over to sport it’s uh just kind of like herky jerky it holds revs too much you never want to use that in comfort mode it’s very very smooth it takes off the rough edges of every single shift you wanna you wanna
Get going quickly it’s like just like just this wave of smoothness from the torque converted it’s exactly what you want from a car like this and i don’t have any problems with that it’s not as smooth and as refined as the mercedes gearbox is and the the audi setups but i think it’s like 95 there for a luxury ride so everything else you know you’re gonna look at
This from one primary objective how quiet is it and as i talked about in the shop that’s where they spent some serious money electronically trying to dial out road noise and then of course having laminated glass all the way around you makes a huge difference and it’s not like the g80 was loud or any other suvs but this is definitely one of the most quiet cars
You’re ever going to get in with the addition of the electric or 48 volt system with the mild hybrid setup really all it’s doing is giving you more torque it’s giving that instant surge of torque to supplement or well correct the fact that there’s still turbo lag from the twin turbo engine and you know this is a big car so it’s not going to blow your doors off
It’s not going to blow you away with speed and it’s not about that it’s just adequate enough it just has the enough amount of power that you want to get off the line quickly or to get going on the highway there’s never any issue with that but the way that they’ve tuned the throttle it’s like lazy style even when you put your foot down really suddenly it’s like
Ah just smooths every input out and that’s the same with the steering this is just one lazy car and it is amazing for it the front seats to me and the comfort factor the glass the the feeling of everything in here feels very expensive without being hyper gimmicky and i think that’s that’s the big problem with a lot of luxury sedans that you’re starting to see
They’re like well we’ve done everything we can and now electric vehicles are coming out people want something different and this is like right at the perfect spot between trying to do what the germans used to do well from like taking bang and olufsen having some of the mercedes stuff in here and having some of the bmw simpleness i i really think this is one of
Their best layouts and i know it’s gonna get screwed up soon in favor of touch everything but i really really enjoy the way that this car drives now if you’re looking at it from any type of performance metric how does it handle how does it all that it is always going to be soft the responses are going to be slow it’s it’s set up not to jostle your passengers and
That that’s the one thing that i will say if you’re looking for a little bit more uh to steal the german word for everything dynamics you’re gonna have to go to like the audi uh like s8 or something like that or the seven series with you know some type of m performance handling package but i really like this car overall and i think their addition of air ride
And of course rear wheel steering make a huge difference here in a car like this it’s easy to get around it’s easy to to maneuver if i had one complaint or a couple complaints of course like i said it’s always the transmission tuning could be better and the ride definitely the the the body does not feel as rigid stretched out as compared to the g80 but i’m going
To leave it at that let’s get into the final thoughts final thoughts on the genesis g90 in big shock the moment i sat in this i liked it and there’s something here that the g80 and the g90 have that their other products or haven’t had in the past and that is cohesion and when you look at it things like the way they’ve integrated the hood the headlights now it
Feels purposeful it feels more high-end rather than just like let’s try to make it cool and whether you like the exterior or not it’s a big step up from what they’ve done in the past and the interior is no different the interior is some of the best work they’ve ever done because they understand how to implement technology and then leaving things alone for the
Buyer demographic you’re spending a hundred thousand you don’t want to be in here trying to fiddle around with like touching everything swiping things almost everything in here the physical controls are great they finally figured out how to do it well yes there are some gimmicks like the door handles and the way the doors open you know with a motor and all that
Crap that that’s not necessarily making it any better but what they have done here in terms of the underbody the mechanical part all aluminum suspension you have rear wheel steering air ride that’s transparent to the user things that you have to spend well into the 120 50 000 range in the german counterparts when you compare this to something like the lexus ls
I mean that car feels like two generations old compared to this and i know this is a luxury barge you can’t judge it like you would judge other cars but i’m i’m so happy to see what they did here this is some of their best work and i hope you get a chance to at least look at it check it out just sit in it and just appreciate what they’ve done thanks for watching
I’ll see you next video you
Transcribed from video
2023 Genesis G90 | Great Car, Gimmicks and All By savagegeese
