Genesis G70 review - MPG and running costs

It’s one thing to be impressed by the performance, refinement or flexibility of the latest powertrains from BMW and Mercedes, but efficiency is probably their greatest trick. A BMW 330i or Mercedes C300 will easily crack the 7.0sec to 62mph time barrier, but they’ll also approach 45mpg. Sure, they are able to slurp fuel with the best of them while trying to hit claimed performance numbers, but the duality of their powertrains when you slow things down makes them incredibly efficient when at a cruise. The same can’t be said for the G70.

Even at a gentle cruise, a 241bhp petrol will struggle to reach 25mpg – an astonishingly low figure given its power output. Now for context, the G70 2.0T is rated at between 31 and 35mpg, but in reality this requires a very gentle right foot, but given the powertrain’s rather tardy performance it does need to be pushed just to keep up with fast traffic, making that figure tricky to reach in the real world. The 194bhp variant has the same combined mpg rating on paper. Diesels reach 42-44mpg on paper, figures that are again difficult to match, but they do at least get closer.

This poor efficiency then negatively affects overall running costs thanks to the cars’ high corresponding CO2 figures – over 200g/km for both petrol models, or more than 50g/km up on a BMW 330i or Mercedes C300.

As for other running costs, the Genesis brand doesn’t have much history of excellent reliability, but all the hardware that’s been borrowed from the wider Hyundai/Kia group (which is all of it, frankly) has proven itself to be extremely trustworthy. Wheel and tyre sizes are relatively sensible, but the high-quality OEM rubber options do make them costly to replace.