Op-Ed: Is Genesis Right To Skip PHEVs And Move Straight To Full EVs?

Genesis is bucking the PHEV trend altogether and it might be better off.

Genesis GV70e

Andrei Nedelea

By: Andrei Nedelea

Feb 25, 2021 at 7:44am ET

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Even though plug-in hybrids, or PHEVs for short, are nothing more than transitional models used by manufacturers to get the emissions down for their entire range, we’re still stuck with them for at least another decade. Most are the definition of compliance cars, vehicles created with the sole purpose of keeping automakers from paying the hefty fines incurred by exceeding a certain emissions threshold for all cars they sell.

Manufacturers are now flooding the market with plug-in hybrids, some purely focused on efficiency, while others are said to have performance enhancing benefits on top of their superior green credentials (compared to a traditional ICE vehicle, of course). All the German premium brands are doing it, as are most of the mainstream Euro manufacturers and plenty of Asian automakers are also leaning on PHEVs for the reason mentioned above.

Hyundai and Kia also sell plenty of PHEVs too, yet the group’s new luxury brand, Genesis, has decided to skip PHEVs completely and just offer either ICE vehicles or fully-electric versions of the same vehicles. In fact, the manufacturer wants to have ICE and EV versions of basically all the models in their range, not counting the Genesis GV, the sister vehicle to the newly revealed Hyundai Ioniq 5 (which will be electric-only).

The official reason why Genesis is skipping PHEVs is that they just don’t fit with the marque’s forward-thinking image. Making PHEVs would also mean diverting resources that could have been spent on pure-electric vehicles, and Genesis just isn’t interested, it seems.

Gallery: 2021 Genesis eG80 EV

2021 Genesis eG80 front

2021 Genesis eG80 front three-quarter 2021 Genesis eG80 rear three-quarter 2021 Genesis eG80 rear view

But then why are most other manufacturers, even Hyundai, the company behind Genesis, still launching new PHEVs? Well, it’s because PHEVs are cheaper to engineer compared to an EV, which usually requires a brand new dedicated platform that would not accommodate an internal-combustion engine (not a strict rule, though, as there are some platforms that are good for ICE, hybrid, PHEV and EV).

Making a PHEV is basically electrifying the cars they were already going to sell because it’s cheaper than reengineering them from the ground-up with electrification in mind. Yet Genesis, a new manufacturer with not a lot of history or tradition in making any type of vehicle, really, is just not going to make PHEVs at all.

This, in spite of the fact that a few years ago, the company announced that it was, in fact, going to make PHEVs. The first plug-in hybrids were supposed to be added to the Genesis lineup in 2019, yet they never came and then we learned that the manufacturer had abandoned them altogether, thanks to a statement by Genesis’ American CEO, Mark Del Rosso.