Genesis Is Launching Its First Hybrids Because of Slowing EV Demand

With customers less enthusiastic about EVs than anticipated, Genesis has decided to split the difference and go hybrid.

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The Korean luxury marque plans to launch a range of hybrids in the near future, according to Top Gear . That doesn’t mean the automaker is giving up on fully electric powertrains, but it’s not giving up on the combustion engine either.

News of the shift comes from no less a reliable source than Genesis’s global head, Mike Song. The executive spoke to the website at this past weekend’s Goodwood Festival of Speed and explained why the company was making an adjustment to the route it’s taking to electrification.

“Electrification is still our vision,” Song said. “We will have 100 percent electrified vehicles, but the market and the customers now want hybrid more than EV, so we really want to bring Genesis hybrid into the market as soon as possible.”

Genesis’s upcoming 2025 lineup includes eight distinct models (including the Electrified G80 and Electrified GV70 EVs) in the U.S. that use either internal combustion engines or all-electric powertrains. It remains to be seen whether the new models will be mild or plug-in hybrids, but it’s possible that they could use powertrains from the marque’s parent company, Hyundai, which sells several hybrids globally. As for which existing models will get the hybrid treatment, Song said the company would “apply it to as many models as possible.”

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In 2024, we’ve seen several premium automakers, like Mercedes-Benz and Aston Martin, have backtracked on their pledges to go all-electric. While some may view the sudden change of course as a sign of panic, Genesis’s vehicle development head, Tyrone Johnson, talks about adjusting to a changing market and catering to what customers want.

“We’re constantly reassessing what it is that we’re doing and sometimes you need to make slight adjustments,” Johnson told Top Gear. “As Mike has said the EV strategy holds strong, but you shouldn’t be so dogmatic with certain things when boundary conditions change, you have to react and that’s what’s happening.”

Neither Song nor Johnson laid out a timeline for the brand’s first hybrids. Reports from earlier this year suggested they could launch as soon as next year, which is when the brand had originally aimed to go all-electric. Whenever the new cars and SUVs do arrive, don’t expect them to carry the “Electrified” name, since that has been how the company has identified its EVs up until now.

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