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Hyundai’s luxury arm has fallen behind its competitors when it comes to hybrid, but from 2026, Genesis has announced that will change as it adds the first hybrid models to its line-up.
At Hyundai’s 2025 CEO Investor Day presentation, the company announced a major step in the growth of the Genesis brand.
Despite Hyundai offering multiple hybrid models across its mainstream portfolio, the luxury Genesis brand has, until now, gone without a hybrid option, focusing instead on fully electric vehicles.
The first hybrid Genesis model is set to enter production in 2026, although Hyundai didn't confirm which model would debut with a hybrid powertrain.
A likely candidate could be a second-generation version of the G70, which has been in production since 2017 and is the only Genesis sedan to have not been renewed.
Replacements for the GV70 and GV80, which will be approaching six years in production by 2026, could potentially come later.
The investor call announced that the future Genesis range would comprise electric vehicles (BEV), hybrid (HEV), and extended range plug-in hybrid (EREV) poertrains.
The move remaps the previous Genesis product plan that would have seen the brand launch only electric vehicles from 2025 onwards.
In 2024, the global head of Geneis told Top Gear, “Five years back we anticipated that the EV era would arrive very quickly, and we really wanted to be a leader and a disruptor in the EV space.”
“Customers now want hybrid more than EV, so we really want to bring Genesis hybrid into the market as soon as possible.”
The EREV range is scheduled to launch across the Hyundai line-up from 2027, with Hyundai promising a combined driving range of more than 960 kilometres.
The Genesis brand reached 1 million cumulative sales in August 2023, and has now been operating for over 10 years, with Hyundai predicting that Genesis will hit 350,000 global sales annually by 2030.
In 2023 the brand recorded 225,189 sales, and the 2024 tally grew only slightly to 229,532 sales.
The growth will come from expanded presence in the USA, Europe, Korea, China, and the Middle East, and a broader portfolio of models, with Genesis calling out concepts like X Gran Equator and Neolun SUVs and the X Gran Coupe as the brand's vision for future products.
Kez Casey migrated from behind spare parts counters to writing about cars over ten years ago. Raised by a family of automotive workers, Kez grew up in workshops and panel shops before making the switch to reviews and road tests for The Motor Report, Drive and CarAdvice.
