Episode 88; Quick Charge: Genesis GV90 Confirmed, EV Orders Surge & Five-Year Costs Hit Petrol Parity

Genesis has revealed its enormous 490kW GV90 electric flagship, with the ultra-luxury Neolun version now confirmed for Australia.

We also look at something potentially more telling than another EV survey — actual orders being written by one of Australia's biggest prestige dealer groups — plus an NRMA five-year ownership-cost comparison showing affordable EVs effectively reaching cost parity with petrol.

And there's finally movement for XPeng owners caught in the TrueEV dispute, while Tesla's new $2,000 Australian trade-in offer passes the fact-check and is genuinely live.

YOUTUBE TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Intro
00:43 490kW Genesis GV90 confirmed for Australia
04:54 Actual dealer orders show Australian EV demand surging
07:49 Five-year EV versus petrol ownership costs reach parity
13:02 TrueEV court case dismissed — what XPeng owners need to know
15:19 Tesla's current $2,000 Australian trade-in bonus
16:00 Outro

Disclaimer:

All specifications, pricing, and information discussed in this episode were correct at the time of recording. The electric vehicle market moves quickly, so we recommend you always check the latest details directly with manufacturers, dealers, or official sources.

This podcast provides general news and information only, based on publicly available sources and Australian Consumer Law guidelines. It is not legal, financial, or professional advice. For advice specific to your situation, please contact the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) or seek independent professional guidance.

Plugged in Australia and its hosts are not responsible for any decisions, misunderstandings, or purchases made based on the content of this show.

Sourcing & Transparency

At Plugged in Australia, all our stories are sourced from publicly available news articles and reports. We do not receive any advance information or briefings from brands or manufacturers.

Any analysis or opinions we share are based solely on this public information.

Our main sources include (though we also use many others, and they vary by episode):

• https://www.carsales.com.au/
• https://www.carexpert.com.au/
• https://thedriven.io/
• https://www.carsguide.com.au
• https://autotalk.com.au
• https://www.carsguide.com.au
• https://evcentral.com.au
• https://www.drive.com.au

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

G'day, welcome back to Plugged in Australia Quick Charge, the shorter version of the show for when you want the main EV news without the full deep dive. This is episode 88 for Monday, the 24th of August 2027. Today Genesis has unveiled a 490kW electric flagship that's coming to Australia. Actual dealer order books are showing a very interesting surge in EV demand, and a five-year ownership cost comparison suggests affordable electric cars have basically reached parity with petrol. We've also got the latest chapter in the X Pang and True EV mess, and Tesla trying to sweeten the deal with a $2,000 trading offer. Let's get into it. Alright, we're going to kick things off with Genesis, and they've finally pulled the covers off the production G V90. I'll tell you what, this thing makes the EV9 and Ionic 9 look almost restrained. The G V90 is Genesis's new full-size electric flagship, and Australia is getting it in 2027. But there's an important qualification on exactly what we're getting. Genesis has revealed two broad versions. There's the conventional G V90, which can be configured with three rows and six or seven seats, and then there's the rather ridiculous G V90 Neolon. The Neolon is the one with the dramatic rear hinged coach doors, an extremely luxurious cabin and available four-seat executive suite layer. Neolon is confirmed for Australia. The more conventional six or seven seat G V90 is still being considered for our market. It looks possible, but it hasn't been formally locked in yet. That's worth getting right, particularly for anyone looking at this thing as a super luxury alternative to an EV9 or Ionic 9. Underneath both versions is the new Genesis specific electric architecture called EMP, rather than simply putting a fancier body on the familiar EGMP platform. The battery has a 123.5 kilowatt hours of capacity. A dual motor all-wheel drive system produces approximately 490 kW and 800 newtonm, and the vehicle uses an 800 volt electrical architecture. Genesis is talking about roughly 500km of driving range, but that isn't a final Australian certified or WLTP figure for that matter at this stage. So I wouldn't carve 500km into stone just yet. Just hold on to your hammer and chisel for a bit. Charging is more concrete. Genesis says that connected to a suitably powered 350 watt kilowatt DC charger, the G90 can go from 10 to 80% in about 22 minutes. That's an awful lot of battery to refill in 22 minutes, and it's a massive car. We're talking 5.29 meters long, just a smidge over 2 meters wide, and a wheelbase of 3.25 meters. Depending on configuration, the G V90 also weighs well north of 3 tonne. So although it shares a family tree with Hyundai and Kia's large electric vehicles, Genesis is clearly aiming somewhere different. The chassis gets multi-chamber adaptive air suspension, active rear-wheel steering of up to about 5 degrees, Joule Electronic Limited Slip differentials, then the Neolon starts doing properly extravagant things. Its so-called Neolon Arch Gate uses powered coach style doors and removes the conventional visible B pillar opening between them. The front seats can rotate 180 degrees while parked, allowing them to face the rear occupants. There's an available fridge, folding tables, heated interior services, high-end materials, and huge 23.6 inch pop-up OLED cinematic displays. There's also a 25-inch head-up display and a 25-speaker Bang Olsen audio system with Dolby Atmos. Genesis is fitting 12 airbags, including what it claims is a world first production roof airbag, designed to provide additional protection in a rollover. So when I say flagship, we're not just talking about giving an EV9 a bit of nice leather, some napper leather and some better charging and chuck another 30 grand on top of it. Genesis is trying to move the brand significantly further up market. Now Australian pricing is not confirmed, and I'm deliberately not turning overseas numbers or industry estimates into a local pricing for this one. But the Neolon in particular is clearly trying to occupy the sort of territory usually associated with the very top end of brands like your Range Rover, your Mercedes, your BMW, and potentially even brands above them. The key question, however, for Australian buyers will be whether we also receive the more practical three-row version, because a 490 kilowatt, genuinely luxurious seven-seat electric SUV could be extremely interesting. A four-seat electric limousine with gigantic coach doors is interesting and probably very nice to look at, but for a very different reason. Australian arrivals are expected in the first half of 2027. Now this next story interests me a little bit because it's not another survey asking somebody whether they might theoretically consider buying an EV one day. These are actually vehicle orders. Autosports Group is one of Australia's biggest prestige and luxury dealer groups. It operates dozens of dealerships across brands including BMW, Audi, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, and a growing collection of newer EV brands. And earlier this year, the company's own numbers were already showing a very different EV demand picture from the idea that Australians had stopped buying them. Back in May, national battery electric sales were up 92% financial year to date, according to the market data Autosports presented to its investors. More importantly, for the company itself, its BEV order rate had tripled. Autosports said its total new vehicle order bank had reached its highest recorded level and that electric vehicle deliveries were actually running behind orders because demand was exceeding available supply. And now we have its full year result. Autosports has reported record revenue of approximately $3.186 billion, up about 12%, with gross profit reaching $590 million, which is up 15%. But I want to be very clear with that number. That doesn't mean electric vehicles caused AutoSports to make $3.2 billion. Management itself says much of the record revenue growth in relatively flat overall market came from acquisitions and dealer expansion. About $204 million of additional revenue came from acquisitions completed during the 2026 financial year. Another $76 million came from prior acquisitions cycling through, and roughly $22 million came from expanding brands. So don't want to match those two stories together. What matters for EV demand is the order behaviour. Autosports says its overall order bank expanded by about 290% during the financial year as electric vehicle orders came in rapidly. Customer inquiries were up about 20%, and total order right across the business was also up about 20%. Management is openly saying that its transition toward EV sales is now an important part of its growth expectations. There's an important limitation here as well. Autosports isn't the whole Australian new car market. It's particularly strong in the premium and the prestige segments, so I wouldn't take its order bank and declare that every EV manufacturer in Australia is suddenly booming, but I do think it's a useful counterpoint to consumer intention surveys. A survey is going to tell you what someone says they might do. An order bank tells you people have actually walked into a dealership and started the process of buying a car. And if deliveries are lagging because supply hasn't caught up with these orders, headline monthly registration data can be temporarily understated because the demand is still sitting in the pipeline. That's something worth keeping an eye on through the rest of 2026 and into 2027. Sticking with the actual money, the NRMA has published a useful comparison of what petrol, electric and hybrid cars really cost to own over five years and 55,500 kilometres. And I like these numbers because they don't give either side of the EV argument the easy headline it probably wants. The methodology includes the stuff that really matters purchase and depreciation, fuel or electricity, insurance, registration, your green slip CTP, scheduled servicing, and replacement tyres. And at the affordable end of the market, the result is almost a dead heat. The petrol MG3 Vive came out with a calculated five-year ownership cost of $29,951. The electric BYD at O1 Essential came in at $30,616. That's a difference of just $665 over five years. And then across the entire small car group, it gets even closer. The average petrol car came in at $35,527. The average EV $35,569. That's $42 difference over five years. The hybrid average was slightly higher again at $36,174. Now, what's really interesting is how they arrived at almost the same finishing line. Against the Petrol MG3 specifically, the ADO1 saves around $3,508 in energy and another $438 in scheduled servicing, but it gives back around $3,725 through additional depreciation, $694 in comprehensive insurance and $192 in tires. Same ballpark at the end, completely different path getting there. Looking across the small car category, EV servicing averaged around $1,335 over five years versus $2,187 for petrol. Electricity averaged around $2,781 compared with $6,143 in the petrol. The biggest negative was insurance. Small EVs averaged around $9,552 across five years versus $7,447 for petrol. But even there, the individual model matters enormously. An EV isn't automatically more expensive to insure, just as a petrol car isn't automatically cheaper. And the study's electricity assumption needs to be understood as well. It uses a blended price of 32.5 cents per kilowatt hour. So if you've got rooftop solar, cheap overnight electricity, or one of the planes providing free or super cheap daytime electricity, your EV results can be substantially better than this model. But it is good that they are using what I would call worst-case scenario for home charging. Everybody's going to sit around that sort of 32.5 cents per kilowatt hour average. Obviously, peak off peak, it's going to be averaged out on that one there. So but it's good that they've used that figure. Now depreciation was also more nuanced than the stereotype suggests. Across the passenger vehicles assessed, the average petrol model lost around 53.6% of its drive away price over the five years. Hybrids lost 53.4%, and EVs were 54.6%. So the average difference between drivetrains was only about 1% each point, while individual models varied dramatically. And that's really the story. The claim that an EV automatically saves everybody a fortune isn't necessarily true, but neither is the claim that the higher upfront cost automatically makes an EV much more expensive to own. At the affordable end of this Australian comparison, total ownership cost has effectively reached parity with petrol. You're just spending the money in different places. And as time goes on, those insurance premiums are going to come down at the moment. They're very high because parts availability is very low. I know a lot of the Chinese EVs are getting written off because they can't get apart for six months, and so the insurer just writes it off. Whether if it was a vehicle that it's been on sale here for a while, you know, a Toyota Camry or Ford Everest or something like that, where parts availability is much higher and easier, then that would bring that down. Because obviously, when the insurers work out their premiums, they're going to look at average claims and average cost of claims for that particular vehicle as one of their measures. Obviously, they look at other things as well, but they're going to say, right, yeah, well, this particular vehicle gets written off more. They don't really care why. It could be because it's more prone to an accident, it could be that it the way that it uh crashes to it dissipates its energy that makes it more uh likely to be written off. Um, or the actual most real reason is because of parts availability. So as that sort of supply keeps going, then that's what's gonna happen. And um things like what we're gonna touch on in the next story is when manufacturers uh going left and right and up and down in who's gonna be importing the vehicles, it that doesn't help. So anyway, I digress, let's keep going. So we have an important update rather to the true EV and XP saga. We've covered the administration, the court dispute, and X Pang's earlier decision to step in on a goodwill basis for customers caught with unpaid cashback commitments, which I still think is unbelievable. I've never heard of that ever happening before. It's crazy. The new development is that the federal court case has now been dismissed. Now, True EV was required to provide security to continue the action and failed to provide the required amount, so the case was dismissed. True EV says it is disappointed with the decision and is considering its options. Now for actual XPang owners, the more important bit is what happens to the money. X Bank says that where an eligible cashback or extended warranty commitment made by TrueEV is properly documented and verified, X Bank Australia will work directly with that customer to provide support. So if you're waiting on one of the $3,000 or $5,000 promotional commitments we've discussed previously, the practical advice is contact X Bank Australia directly and have your paperwork ready to go. Now that isn't a blanket promise that every claimed amount will simply be paid without checking, and it doesn't resolve what is owed to True EV's other suppliers and unsecured creditors. But for XPing vehicle owners stuck in the middle, there is now a considerably clearer path than there was a few months ago. And hopefully it's the last time we need to mention this and we can just get on with it for X Peng because it's they make nice cars. I've probably mentioned before that before we bought the C-Line 7, we actually had a deposit on a G6. It wasn't until we found out that it was a so we bought the C-Line 7 last year, so it's a 2025. We found out that the G6 we were going to be getting would as a 2024 build that wasn't disclosed or anything like that. Now there was no difference in the car, but TrueEV was getting older G6 cars, and so for me that was a massive red flag, and so uh we decided to pull the pin on that one. I guess one of the perks of having been in the industry for quite a few years, you just sort of pick up on these little nuances here and there and check things. I check everything. So kind of glad we did and we kind of uh avoided all the mess that's going on, but uh not to say we wouldn't consider one in the future though. And lastly, there is a current $2,000 Australian Tesla trade-in bonus, and it applies when an eligible vehicle is traded toward a new or demonstrator Model 3 or Model Y. You need to order and take delivery by 31st of December 2026. The $2,000 is added on top of Tesla's assessed trade-in value rather than being built into the valuation itself. And Tesla's current terms say it can be combined with other offers. Used Tesla purchases are excluded, as are business customers, including fleet enterprise, rental, and government buyers. So Tesla trying to keep the momentum going on its Model Y and try and build a little bit more momentum on its Model 3. So we'll see how much of an impact that one has there. And that is a wrap for episode 88 of Plugged in Australia Quick Charge. As always, if you have any stories, feedback, questions, info at plugged inastralia.com.au. And as always, thank you so much for listening. And until the next time, stay plugged in and stay charged. Chi Vidyamo.