The Genesis GV60 is a great little EV; it’s quick, quirky and super nice inside. It’s also the first production car that’ll let you get in and drive solely through the use of biometric tech — no key fob or smartphone required. You can unlock the GV60 with your face and turn it on with your fingerprint; it’ll even remember your seat position and personalised settings. Man, this really is the future.
The biometric system is incredibly easy to set up. You need to have both of the GV60’s key fobs inside the car to create your driver profile, but this task takes less than five minutes to complete. You’ll have to roll your finger around on the touchpad to get all the various parts of your print, and then longingly gaze into the facial-recognition camera on the driver’s-side B-pillar. Privacy worrywarts needn’t panic, by the way; Genesis says all your personal data is only ever stored in the car and can’t be accessed by a third party.
But slick as the biometric system is, using this tech day to day definitely takes some getting used to. Which brings me to where I found myself last week: falling arse-first through my kitchen window.
If you’re like me, your car keys and house keys are always together. I mean, why wouldn’t they be? I have one house key on the ring for my ‘99 Miata and a second on a carabiner that I clip to the fob of every loaner vehicle I review. I can’t think of a scenario where I’d leave with my car keys and not lock the house on the way out. And since I never needed to bring the GV60’s key while I was testing it, I ended up leaving my house key behind.
This wasn’t a one-off occurrence, either. A couple of times during my week with the GV60, I’d get halfway down the block before having that “oh goddamnit” realisation. I guess the bright side here is that I now know how easy it is to pop the screen off one of my windows, and that my patio chairs are plenty sturdy for self-hoisting. Also, wow, I haven’t had to break into my own home since I was a teenager sneaking in way after curfew. Falling into the kitchen sink really takes me back.
Still, I imagine the longer you live with the Genesis, the quicker you’d retrain your brain on things like remembering your keys. But this isn’t the only part of the GV60 experience that requires some mental rewiring. Your natural instinct to get in the car, hit the brake pedal and press the start button now requires an extra step. You need to double authenticate that it’s actually you inside the car, by pressing your pointer on the fingerprint reader on the centre console. Why this isn’t right next to the GV60’s on/off switch — as it is in the GV70 crossover — is a mystery. I kept forgetting to do one before the other, or which thing I needed to press first.
Locking the GV60 requires more attention, as well. Instead of just hitting a button on a key fob as you walk away, you need to run your finger along the driver’s door handle and use the facial-recognition camera to electronically lock the car. Weirdly, despite being unnecessarily complicated, I found this step a lot easier to remember, maybe because those door handles stick out like lateral cowlicks.
Learning curve aside, the GV60’s biometric integration is simple and effective, and I have no doubt this technology will spread like wildfire through Genesis’ lineup, the larger Hyundai Motor Group and, honestly, the auto industry as a whole. The more I used it, the more I could totally see living without a key fob day to day. Well, assuming I remember my house key.