It was one of those nights. I had been in LA all day for a Volkswagen event, gotten dinner in town and still had a two-to-three hour drive back to San Diego ahead of me. And the damn battery wasn't full.
I'd have to stop at a charger on my way out of town. Exhausted and dreading another long stop, I plugged into a 350-kW station at a Target. I went in, grabbed a snack and peed.
I came out expecting to sit around and twiddle my thumbs. But because I was driving a Genesis Electrified G80 , in 15 minutes I had gone from around 30% to 80%. Talk about luxury.
It was a clear payoff from Genesis' commitment to using high-voltage architectures, which enable blazing-fast charge times and solid efficiency figures. In every way, it felt like the EV experience of the future. Well, almost every way.
Cursed Regen One thing I love about driving a Tesla or my Blazer EV is the well-calibrated, persistent one-pedal driving mode. If you haven't experienced it yet, it's a setting that allows you to drive using only the accelerator most of the time. Lift off completely and the regenerative braking system kicks in with enough force to slowly stop the car.
Drive using it and you can get smooth, efficient driving with less foot fatigue. It's hardly a new concept; It's existed for over a decade in the EV space. But Hyundai Motor Group still hasn't fully figured it out.
And its premium brand, Genesis, is the worst offender. In a Hyundai, the system works reasonably well. In the Ioniq 6 I tested this y.