Genesis GV60 Cargo Test: How Big Is the Trunk?

• The Genesis GV60 has 24 cubic feet of cargo space.
• That's less than its mechanically related Hyundai and Kia siblings.
• Our real-world test shows how it really stacks up.

This is an interesting cargo area. On the one hand, it's quite boxy in its lower half, especially where it meets the tailgate. The roofline above is quite raked, but the overall cargo area is shaped like suitcases where it counts.

By contrast, this is the Ioniq 5's cargo area. The photo is at a different angle, but I think you can see its liftgate opening is diagonal from roof to bumper. It's basically a big triangle from the side instead of being shaped like a triangle sitting on top of a rectangle as in the GV60.

The result is the Ioniq 5 is much harder to load and has a lot of wasted space. We'll see if that's the case with the GV60.

Like the Ioniq 5 and EV6, the GV60 has extra space under the cargo floor. They're not all the same, though. The EV6 is a typical wide-open floor that easily expands its capacity. The Ioniq 5 has this big north-south hump in the middle that renders the extra space nearly useless. This is what the GV60 has going for it. There are the little cubbies and a subwoofer that make the space a hodgepodge, but there's enough extra space here that I'll be testing with and without the floor in place.

You'll also note there is a cartridge-style rollout cargo cover. Unlike the EV6, you can't store it under the floor (nor did I find there was enough space to store it with all my bags), so I'll be testing with and without that, too. There's also a reclining back seat, so that'll come into play as well.

Here's some nice boilerplate information about the bags I use and their dimensions. There are two bags you'd definitely have to check at the airport: Big Gray (26 inches long x 16.5 inches wide x 12 inches deep) and Big Blue (26 x 16.5 x 10). There are three roll-aboards that usually fit as carry-on: Medium Tall (24 x 14 x 9), Medium Wide (23 x 15 x 9) and the smaller Green Bag (21 x 14 x 9.5). Finally, there's everyone's favorite Fancy Bag (21 x 12 x 11), a medium-size duffle.

With the floor and cargo cover in place, I could fit all my bags except the Fancy Bag. The cargo cover could be flipped up, though, and it didn't really impede the results.

This is not a good result, even for a vehicle with 24 cubic feet of cargo space. A Subaru Crosstrek can fit all my bags and it has only 19 cubic feet; most other subcompact SUVs have bigger volumes and can also swallow my bags.

The cargo area's squared-off lower portion definitely made loading easier than in the Ioniq 5 and you can see how well it aligns with the Big Gray suitcase, but the radically raked area above creates a lot of awkward-to-use wasted space.

OK, now let's start tweaking things to see how all the bags might fit.

First up, I removed the cargo cover. Then, I unreclined (declined?) the 60 portion of the 60/40-split back seat from the angle I originally declared to be "comfortable."

There, that's enough of a difference to just barely let the Fancy Bag fit. It's pushed up against the glass, though, which is allowed since it won't fly forward and rear visibility was still OK.

Now let's remove the floor.

Really not that much of a difference. I played around with it a lot, but this is still the best I could do. There's just not that much gained by that small portion of extra floor depth. There's still so much wasted space above and, given those cubby indentations, below.

By contrast, here is the Kia EV6 with its floor removed and all six bags easily fitting. So, despite the EV6 having only 0.4 cubic feet more space on paper, it's far more spacious in practice. The Ioniq 5, meanwhile, is still better than the GV60. It's harder to load because of the liftgate angle, but there was ultimately more room left over (even if it was awkward to utilize) and there's a sliding back seat that you can choose to sacrifice legroom room in favor of cargo room.

As such, according to my cargo tests, the EV6 has significantly more space than the Ioniq 5 and GV60, even though the specs would suggest otherwise. Luxury EVs that perform better than the GV60 include the Cadillac Lyriq, Mercedes-Benz EQB and EQE SUV, and the Audi Q8 E-tron Sportback. The GV60's result was basically the same as the Audi Q4 E-tron, and it did better than the Polestar 2, Volvo EX40 and EC40.

And finally, like its siblings, there is also underhood storage. I would not call it a frunk. It can, however, hold the charge cord, the tire repair kit and the vehicle-to-load adapter that you can use to plug a toaster or whatever into the car. Great! Better than it all being in the cargo area.

I own a Kia Niro EV, which has a compartment just like this, and this is exactly how and for what we use it for. I've literally opened this compartment twice in two years. Sort of a "break in case of emergency" sort of thing.