12 things I learnt driving this electric car for six months

Borrowing a car to review for a few days, or even a week, is one thing. But using one as your everyday car for six whole months is quite another – especially when it’s electric.

Whereas a one-week loan helps you understand how the car drives and how its infotainment system performs, half a year gives you the chance to dig much deeper.

Every single element of a car has its time under the spotlight, from the obvious things like range and charge speed, to aspects that are initially overlooked but later help form your overall opinion of the product. Details like the shape of the electric mirror controls, the turning circle, and speed of the smartphone app.

I’ve spent the last six months driving a Genesis GV60, and what follows is everything I’ve learnt about welcoming an electric car into my life.

Buttons are better than touchscreens

I’ve already written a whole article on this, but it’s worth repeating; the GV60 has a fantastic interior, and that praise mostly centres on its use of physical switchgear. Instead of putting everything on the touchscreen, like the Tesla Model 3 and Volvo EX30, the Genesis GV60 has physical controls for just about everything. For such a futuristic looking car, its secondary controls are reassuringly traditional.

The mirror controls are a particular highlight, since they are usable without looking away from the road, and are far quicker to adjust than those buried in the touchscreens of other cars. The GV60 still has a touchscreen, which looks good and works well, but even that can be controlled with a BMW-style control wheel if you prefer.

Speed sign recognition tech doesn’t work

This is a fault shared by just about every new car, electric or otherwise, but it never ceases to be annoying. Using a forward-facing camera, the system is supposed to recognise road signs and tell you what the speed limit is. Stray over this speed, and it'll warn you with a beep.

It works, but only some of the time. Sometimes the GV60 would incorrectly read the sign on the back of a speed-restricted truck. Other times it would see the speed limit sign at a motorway exit, or a slower road running parallel, and think that applied to the road I was driving on.

The car then beeps repeatedly and flashing the incorrect speed sign in the digital display until it spots another sign; since UK motorways have very few speed signs, this can take a while. Twice it incorrectly told me the speed limit was 80 mph, which, since I was in the UK, would have been impossible.

As with other cars, the warning beeps can be switched off. But you have to do this at the start of every journey.

How to manually unlock a stuck charger

Another problem not unique to the Genesis, is how public chargers will occasionally get stuck to your car, or the car's own cable will fail to unlock. This happens when the charging is finished and the charger has reset ready for its next customer, yet the charger itself is still locked into place. The staff at a Shell garage I asked had no idea they even locked, never mind how to free a faulty one.

After a quick Google search I discovered the GV60 has a manual release, accessible via a small removable panel in the boot, just behind where the charge port is. Remove the panel, pull the manual release, and away you go.

Public EV chargers have improved…

The public EV charge network has improved massively in just a few years. I remember in 2021 how chargers would frequently be broken, but during six months and 4,000 miles with the GV60 I encountered only one faulty plug. The neighbouring charger worked fine, so I was soon on my way.

The network is also larger than ever, with plenty of high-speed chargers in easy reach of motorways, and lots of slower, cheaper lamppost chargers scattered around residential streets – at least in my part of London. Faulty smartphone apps are also a thing of the past, and in most cases you’ll be charging within a minute of parking.

…but they can be very expensive

But, while the service has improved, prices are still very high. My local 150kW charger, operated by MFG, costs £0.79 per kWh. This means a complete fill of the GV60’s battery would be about £60, and in return you’re looking at a real-world range of around 220 miles. Some charge networks offer a lower price per kWh if you pay a monthly subscription – as I covered in an earlier article – but it’s still relatively expensive compared to petrol or diesel on a cost-per-mile basis.

My local lamppost chargers are handy for overnight fills, since I don’t have a charger of my own. Operated by Char.gy, these cost £0.39 per kWh between midnight and 7am, then £0.59 the rest of the time.

Charge station etiquette needs some work

Charger technology and reliability have both improved massively in the last few years. But with growing EV sales comes growing charger demand. I only had to queue a couple of times during my six months with the GV60, but even that was enough to realise many charge stations need to reconsider their layout.

In most cases, a row of chargers is installed at the back of a service station car park. This is fine, but since there’s no formal queueing system, EV drivers are left to establish an order among themselves, or risk losing out. I still haven’t forgiven the Volvo driver who swooped into the charge bay I had patiently been waiting for.

None-EV drivers also need a few lessons in charge station etiquette. They occasionally block access to charge bays while calling into the petrol station shop, and I once saw a driver tucking into their lunch while blocking two charge bays. A bit of signage from fuel station operators would go a long way.

Similarly, lappost chargers are often on streets with no parking restrictions. This means a none-EV can legally park next to one, preventing an EV owner from charging. The limited availability of street parking where I live – and the rarity of it being free, despite being in London – makes this tricky to address in a way that’s fair for everyone. As it stands, EV owners have to hunt around for a free space within a cable’s length of a charger. In six months I only failed this once.

Battery preconditioning is vital…

The GV60 is one of the few EVs that operates at 800 volts instead of 400. This means faster, more efficient charging and a maximum charge rate of about 230 kW. But to get the most out of its fast-charging credentials, you must precondition the battery. This gets the battery to the right temperature for an efficient top-up as you approach the charger, but only works if you set a charger as a destination in the car’s own navigation system.

When I plugged into a 150 kW charger without preconditioning the battery, it would start at only around 60 kW, before slowly increasing to 100-plus once the battery had got up to temperature. When preconditioning first, the car would immediately pass 140 kW at the same charger. I wish EV makers would add a button for manual preconditioning.

…but means you can’t use CarPlay for navigation

Relying on the car’s own navigation to start the preconditioning process means you can’t exclusively use navigation in Apple CarPlay or Android Auto.

I use CarPlay for navigation most of the time, but when I need to precondition the battery I’ll switch to the Genesis navigation and aim it at a charge station. Thankfully, audio from CarPlay, like a podcast, continues in the background.

200 miles of range is okay. Just.

The GV60 Sport Plus has a WLTP range of 289 miles, but I found between 200 and 220 and was more realistic. I have no doubt it would cover more if restricted to slow town and city driving, but a lot of the 4,000 miles I covered in the Genesis was on the motorway.

Two hundred miles might not sound great for a premium and relatively large SUV, but that usually equates to between four and five hours of driving, and by then I’m usually due a break as much as the car. A couple of short stops was enough to get from South London to West Yorkshire in December (when temperatures are lower and batteries are less efficient) without feeling inconvenienced.

I think 250 miles of real-world range, in cold weather, would be ideal for almost all drivers. Anything above that would feel like a bonus on the few occasions it’s really needed.

Pre-heating the cabin is a game-changer

Like most EVs, the Genesis has a smartphone app for remotely heating or cooling the cabin. Since my own car is a no-frills Mazda MX-5, being able to set the interior temperature from home felt like a game-changer. The app was also handy for checking the charge level while plugged into a lamppost a couple of streets away from home.

Even new cars can go wrong

The GV60 twice developed a fault with a seatbelt sensor that needed fixing. This was disappointing, given it’s a brand-new car, but at least the failure demonstrated how a modern car company like Genesis deals with such issues. Instead of taking it to the local dealer, Genesis dispatched a driver to collect my car and drop off a replacement, in the form of a GV70, which was then swapped when my car was returned.

This meant I didn’t have to take the faulty car anywhere, and I wasn’t left without for any time at all. I checked with the Genesis press office, and this is exactly the same service given to real customers. It’s a shame that the problem flared up a second time but, again, I was given a GV70 for the duration of the repair and kept updated on what was happening.

My only criticism is how the GV60 was effectively given a factory reset during the first repair. This defaulted every setting, removed two driver profiles I had created, deleted the car from my Genesis app, and wiped the car’s clever biometric security system. As with all modern cars, setting everything up again can take time.

Can’t charge at home (or as cheaply elsewhere)? An EV might not be for you. Yet

I thoroughly enjoyed my six months with the GV60. Having driven EVs for a few days at a time for an entire decade, it was great to finally live with one as if it were my own. The Genesis mostly delivered on everything it promised, from the refined, comfortable ride, to the blistering performance of this Sport Plus model, and a fantastic interior. It also demonstrates how useful fast-charging can be, and impressed with its use of biometric security.

However, the elephant in the room is my lack of a home charger. Had I been able to fill the battery at home, that earlier estimate of £60 at the local fast charger would have fallen by 90%.

Some home EV charging tariffs cost a little under £0.07 per kWh between midnight and 7am – compared to £0.39 on a lamppost or £0.79 at my local rapid charger. The battery might not have filled from zero to 100% in those seven hours, but 7p per kWh would have made a night-and-day difference to the GV60’s running costs.

Unless you can charge cheaply at home – or at work, or somewhere else you visit frequently – then it is hard to justify the running costs of an EV. But if you can charge at home, the massive cost-saving compared to using public chargers makes EV ownership a no-brainer.