Title: Building High-End Brand in Auto Industry
Creating a high-end brand is an essential task for almost every automobile company in their development.
For average consumers, even if they don’t pay much attention to cars, they would still have a rough idea of foreign luxury car brands.
The representatives of German cars are the “Big Three” – Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi, with Audi belonging to the Volkswagen Group.
The representative of Japanese cars is Lexus, which is backed by Toyota. Friends who know more about cars would also know that Nissan has Infiniti, and Honda has Acura.
American cars have Cadillac and Lincoln, which belong to General Motors and Ford, respectively.
French cars have a slightly weaker presence, but if you do some research, you can still find DS, who belongs to the same group as Citroen.
By counting on your fingers based on the classification of countries, it seems like there’s still something missing? Right, how about Korean cars? Though they can occupy a place in the global auto market, we still can’t think of any high-end brand.
In fact, it’s not that Korea doesn’t have high-end brands. It’s just that their presence in their domestic market is too weak. Even I thought hard for a while and vaguely remembered a Korean luxury car, but just couldn’t recall its name.
Fortunately, a Korean pure electric SUV recently made its global debut, which reminded me of my distant memory – the Hyundai Motor Group has a high-end brand called Genesis.
For the brand Genesis, it’s really hard to sum it up in a few words. A few years ago, when Korean cars were selling like hotcakes in China, it was imported into the Chinese market under the name “Laoenze” or “Jeenes” Unfortunately, weak product investment, market promotion, channel building, and other factors ultimately caused it to neither gain a good reputation nor to become popular, and it had to exit the Chinese market.
With the rise of new concepts such as new energy, intelligence, and direct sales models in recent years, many niche brands seem to have revitalized, with Volvo and Mustang being typical examples.
Hyundai Group retranslated Genesis into the slightly awkward name “Jeoniseis” and chose to re-enter the Chinese luxury car market for the second time.
In April of this year, Genesis announced that it would “enter” China through a direct sales model and built a Genesis House in Shanghai’s Hong Kong Plaza. Afterwards, within just six months, three Genesis models – GV80, G80, and G70 – made their debut at domestic auto shows.
With determination and attitude, Genesis’ future development prospects in China are currently unclear. However, it is imaginable that in an already fiercely competitive traditional fossil fuel car racing track, it will be difficult for Genesis to compete with pioneers such as BBA and make a breakthrough.
Where are the opportunities? Probably in new energy. And so, we see Genesis’ first pure electric SUV – the Genesis GV60.
The Genesis GV60 is built on Hyundai’s E-GMP architecture. After Volkswagen’s MEB platform, this is the second pure electric special architecture launched by the world’s top five cross-border traditional car companies, characterized by modularity and standardization. Currently, in addition to the Genesis GV60, the known electric vehicles under the E-GMP architecture include the Hyundai IONIQ 5 and the Kia EV 6.
Just as its internal structure is the same, the exterior and interior design must also have differences. The GV60’s exterior design continues Genesis’ family design language, featuring a distinctive split-headlight design.
At the same time, although pure electric cars can have fully enclosed front faces, Genesis has not given up the pentagonal front grille on its gasoline car models. The designer moved this iconic element down to the front bumper as an air intake and ventilation grille, and decorated it with fang-shaped design elements on both sides, making the visual effect of the whole front face more exaggerated and sporty.
The official positioning of the Genesis GV60 is as a pure electric sedan SUV, so the side of the car naturally has a coupe-style design. The tinted hidden A/B pillars create a floating roof visual effect.
The hidden door handles and smooth side lines make for a very smooth visual experience. Meanwhile, the designer outlined a lightning bolt shape in chrome on the D column, highlighting its electric car identity.
The length, width, height and wheelbase of the Genesis GV60 are 4515/1890/1580/2900 mm respectively, and a short front and rear overhang design is adopted to ensure the interior space.
At the rear of the car, the GV60 is equipped with a ducktail spoiler commonly seen in sports cars. The taillights on both sides of the car echo the front face and also adopt a split structure, rather than the through-type headlights commonly seen on electric cars today – the only difference is that the “through” part is not the rear of the car, but the ducktail spoiler, which contains a brake light. This small design still brings some new ideas to the increasingly homogenized electric car design.
As for the interior, at first glance, the GV60 is basically what you would expect from an electric car: dual screens, multifunctional steering wheel, and other designs that don’t look particularly unusual.
However, there are still some highlights in three small details.
The first is the rearview mirror. We can see a display screen on each side of the GV60’s doors. This is the first time Genesis has used a digital rearview mirror. It uses externally mounted cameras to transmit images to the two screens on the doors.
However, according to current regulations in China, when the model is introduced in China, this design will still be “castrated”.
The second is the “Crystal Sphere” gear shifter. When the vehicle is not started, it is a glowing crystal sphere.
After the driver presses the start button, the crystal ball will rotate and can be used for shifting. When the engine is turned off, the crystal ball will rotate again.
As for whether this gear shifting method is good or not, we haven’t touched the car, so we can’t say, but it does look quite “ritualistic” indeed…
The third one is the two eye-catching buttons on both sides of the steering wheel: the silver button corresponds to the driving mode switch, and the yellow button is a one-key “Boost” mode – to “activate performance” of the four-wheel-drive performance model within 10 seconds and achieve 0-100km/h acceleration in 4 seconds.
Since performance has been mentioned, let’s finally introduce the power and range of GV60.
In terms of power, the Genesis GV60 to be launched in South Korea will have four power outputs, including the performance version with four-wheel drive (sport mode – 320 kW / 605 Nm; Boost mode – 360 kW / 700 Nm), as well as standard version with rear-wheel drive (168 kW / 350 Nm) and four-wheel drive (234 kW / 605 Nm).
Among them, the performance version not only brings “4 seconds of joy” with the yellow button on the steering wheel but also has a “drift mode”, which can flexibly allocate the power output of the front and rear motors, bringing a fuel-powered car-like drift experience.
In terms of battery and range, the GV60 is equipped with a 77.4 kWh battery pack across the range, with a single-motor model having a range of 451 km, a dual-motor standard version having a range of 400 km, and a dual-motor performance version with a range of 368 km. When using a 350 kW fast charge, the vehicle can be charged from 10% to 80% in 18 minutes. At the same time, the vehicle itself supports 3.6 kW V2L external power supply.
Genesis stated that the GV60 will be launched in 2022 but has not disclosed when and in what form it will be sold in the Chinese market.
Facing the wave of electrification, Hyundai Motor Group has set clear goals for Genesis: starting from 2025, all new models will become pure electric or fuel cell vehicles; become a 100% zero-emission car brand by 2030, and achieve carbon neutrality by 2035.
By then, Genesis will launch 8 new pure electric models, and aim to achieve a global annual sales volume of 400,000 units. All 8 electric cars will also be introduced to China.
In fact, Korean brands have not performed badly in the international market in recent years. In the US market, Genesis can achieve an annual sales volume of more than 20,000 units. In J.D. Power’s 2020 US Vehicle Reliability Report, Genesis even replaced Lexus as the most reliable car brand.
On the electric car front, Hyundai Ioniq has also been on the list of the top-selling electric cars in various countries in recent years.
The problem is that the development of Korean brands in the world’s largest auto market in recent years has not been smooth.
In 2020, the sales volume of Korean brand cars was 719,800 units, a year-on-year decrease of 27.80%, and the market share in the Chinese market has always been below 5%.
In August of this year, Beijing Hyundai’s sales volume was only 40,153 units, a year-on-year decrease of 29.1%. The cumulative sales volume from January to August was 262,621 units, a year-on-year decrease of 31.2%.
But can the Genesis GV60, with its strong product power, help Korean high-end brands break through in the Chinese market?
I’m afraid it’s not just a matter of strong product competitiveness.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.