News

Genesis Returns to TGL as Golf Goes Prime Time

Genesis has never been shy about aligning itself with golf’s upper crust, but its continued partnership with TGL presented by SoFi feels less like traditional sponsorship and more like a statement of intent. This isn’t your grandfather’s country-club golf—and Genesis isn’t interested in being your grandfather’s luxury brand.

The automaker confirmed it will return as a founding partner for TGL’s second season, which tees off December 28, 2025, live on ABC from the SoFi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. The opening match? A Finals rematch between reigning champion Atlanta Drive Golf Club and New York Golf Club—because of course you start season two with unfinished business.

For Genesis, the appeal is obvious. TGL is golf reengineered for prime time: faster, louder, tech-heavy, and designed for an audience that might be more familiar with OLED screens than fairway grass. In other words, it’s a league built for the same customer Genesis is chasing.

A Brand Built on Precision Meets a Sport Reinvented by Tech

Genesis executives have been consistent about their strategy: performance, innovation, and hospitality—three words that also happen to define TGL’s pitch. The league blends real PGA TOUR talent with a hybrid format that starts with full swings fired into a massive 3,400-square-foot simulator screen before transitioning to a physical short-game complex featuring rotating greens and reconfigurable bunkers. It’s part golf lab, part esports arena, and part prime-time spectacle.

Matches are streamlined but still meaningful. Fifteen custom-designed holes per match, nine played in Triples and six in Singles, with every hole worth a point. No filler. No walking between shots. Every swing counts, which makes it easier to understand—and easier to sell.

Genesis sees the same opportunity it saw years ago by tying itself to the PGA TOUR and major international events. This is golf as a modern product, not just a tradition, and Genesis wants to be the brand parked right next to it.

Turning Sponsorship into Experience

Where Genesis separates itself is how deeply it embeds into the event. This season introduces a “Player of the Match” spotlight powered by fan voting across broadcast, digital, and social platforms, with select fans earning a VIP Genesis Finals experience. The brand will also serve as a custom hole sponsor during live broadcasts, integrating directly into the on-screen storytelling rather than sitting quietly on a banner.

Inside the arena, Genesis leans into what it does best: hospitality and presentation. The Genesis Lounge returns with premium access that places guests alongside athletes, celebrities, and VIPs. Genesis owners get exclusive premier parking—because luxury brands never miss an opportunity to remind you who gets the good spots.

There’s also a scavenger hunt—yes, really—called Genesis Scavenger Hunt: Drive and Seek, designed to push fans through the arena while interacting with the brand. It’s marketing, but it’s interactive marketing, which feels appropriately on-brand for a league that literally rotates its greens on a turntable.

And then there are the cars. Three Genesis SUVs will be displayed throughout SoFi Center, including the GV80, GV80 Coupe, and the GV80 Coupe Prestige Black. No surprises there: Genesis knows which vehicles best communicate its current design and luxury ambitions.

Why This Makes Sense for Genesis

Genesis already owns a substantial chunk of professional golf real estate, from the Genesis Invitational to the Scottish Open and the Presidents Cup. TGL simply adds a younger, more tech-forward layer to that portfolio—one that fits neatly alongside a brand still proving it belongs in the luxury conversation.

TGL’s second season runs 10 weeks, includes 15 regular-season matches, and culminates in Finals at the end of March. The global broadcast footprint spans 152 countries, with coverage across ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN App, and JTBC Golf in Korea. For a brand with global aspirations, that’s exposure money can’t easily buy.

Genesis isn’t just sponsoring golf anymore—it’s helping reshape how the sport is consumed. And in doing so, it’s quietly reinforcing the message it’s been sending all along: luxury doesn’t have to be conservative, and tradition doesn’t have to stand still.

If this is the future of golf, Genesis clearly wants the keys.

Source: Genesis

News

China Goes to Le Mans—and It’s About Time

For more than a century, the 24 Hours of Le Mans has been motorsport’s ultimate proving ground: a rolling laboratory where reputations are built, shattered, and occasionally resurrected at 200 mph. Porsche has made it a religion. Ferrari treats it like sacred art. Audi weaponized it. Toyota conquered it through sheer persistence. And yet, through more than 100 editions of the race, one massive corner of the global auto industry has remained conspicuously absent.

Until now.

Chery has signed a five-year agreement with the ACO to compete at Le Mans under its premium Exeed brand, marking the first time a Chinese manufacturer will take on the world’s most famous endurance race. It’s a milestone not just for Chery, but for China’s entire automotive industry—and a signal that the country’s ambitions now extend far beyond showrooms and sales charts.

Because if you want to be taken seriously as a carmaker, there’s no better place to earn your scars than motorsport. And there’s no harsher judge than Le Mans.

Motorsport: The Last Unclaimed Territory

Chinese manufacturers have spent the last two decades mastering volume, electrification, and global expansion. What they’ve largely avoided is racing—the messy, expensive, ego-bruising business of pushing machines past the edge in public. Motorsport has always been more than spectacle; it’s a marketing platform, a technical incubator, and a cultural statement rolled into one. And until now, China has sat that one out.

That’s why Exeed’s Le Mans entry matters. In a race that has hosted everyone from Jaguar and Bentley to Cadillac and Lamborghini, the absence of a Chinese badge has been glaring. Le Mans is where brands prove not just speed, but durability, engineering discipline, and institutional confidence. Showing up means you believe your engineers belong in the same conversation as the world’s best.

Chery clearly believes that now.

The Big Question: What’s Under the Bodywork?

Le Mans isn’t kind to newcomers, and it’s especially unforgiving to half-baked powertrains. Exeed’s current road-car lineup—SUVs and sedans with no GT sports cars in sight—offers little hint of what kind of race car will emerge. What we do know is that an entirely new machine will have to be developed, complete with an internal combustion engine capable of surviving 24 hours of flat-out abuse.

That’s where things get interesting.

Chery, like most Chinese manufacturers, has limited experience beyond four-cylinder engines. Six- and eight-cylinder powerplants are rare exceptions in China’s domestic market, making a Le Mans effort feel almost absurd on paper. Hybridization seems likely—both as a nod to modern endurance racing and a way to leverage China’s strength in electrification—but even that doesn’t solve the core issue: someone still has to build a serious combustion engine.

The smart money says Chery won’t do it alone. Outsourcing the engine to a specialized engineering firm would shortcut years of development pain and reduce the inevitable “childhood illnesses” that plague first-time race programs. It wouldn’t be unprecedented either—plenty of manufacturers have leaned on external expertise before claiming victories as their own.

Impossible Missions Have Precedent

If this all sounds unrealistic, history says otherwise. In the 1960s, Ford’s decision to take on Ferrari at Le Mans seemed laughable. Detroit muscle versus Italian racing aristocracy? We know how that turned out.

Exeed’s challenge may be even steeper. This isn’t just a new team—it’s a new motorsport culture learning endurance racing from scratch. But that’s exactly why the project feels significant. Le Mans has never been about comfort zones. It rewards obsession, resources, and the willingness to fail publicly until you don’t.

And Chery has resources in abundance.

Money, Scale, and a Replica of La Sarthe

Chery sold more than 2.5 million vehicles last year and remains China’s largest auto exporter. This isn’t a vanity startup throwing a logo on a race car—it’s a global manufacturing giant with the financial muscle to play the long game. That matters, because Le Mans success isn’t bought with a single check; it’s earned through years of testing, iteration, and heartbreak.

To underline its seriousness, the ACO agreement reportedly includes French consultants helping Chery build a Le Mans–style test track in Wuhu, where the company is headquartered. A replica of Circuit de la Sarthe on Chinese soil isn’t just symbolic—it’s a declaration of intent. Engineers and drivers training 365 days a year on a homegrown endurance circuit? That’s how racing programs mature.

More Than a Race Entry

Exeed’s Le Mans debut isn’t about trophies—at least not yet. It’s about credibility. About proving that Chinese manufacturers aren’t just fast learners in electrification and manufacturing scale, but capable of mastering the most unforgiving discipline in motorsport.

Le Mans doesn’t care how many cars you sell. It doesn’t care about market share or export numbers. It cares whether your machine can survive the night, the rain, and the relentless punishment of 5,000 kilometers at full tilt.

For the first time, China is ready to find out.

And whether Exeed finishes first or last, just showing up changes the conversation forever.

Source: Chery

News

Winter Exposes the Real Gap Between EVs and ICE Cars

Winter has a way of cutting through marketing claims like road salt through sheetmetal. Range estimates, charging promises, efficiency bragging rights—none of it is immune once temperatures drop and heaters switch on. A recent Green NCAP study puts that reality into sharp focus, comparing how electric vehicles and gasoline-powered cars cope when the weather turns unfriendly. The results aren’t shocking, but they are clarifying.

The test lined up two EVs—the BYD Sealion 7 and the Cupra Born—against two familiar internal-combustion benchmarks, the BMW 5 Series and BMW X2. Same cold conditions, same real-world scrutiny. Different outcomes.

Big Battery, Smaller Losses

The BYD Sealion 7 Comfort entered the test with the usual EV disadvantages: size, weight, and a lot of mass to keep warm. At 2,225 kilograms and packing an 82.5-kWh battery, it’s no lightweight. Yet it handled winter better than expected.

In warm conditions, the Sealion 7 manages around 400 kilometers of range. In the cold, that figure dropped to 337 kilometers—a loss of roughly 16 percent. Green NCAP calls that “relatively moderate,” and in EV terms, that’s practically a compliment. Credit goes to effective thermal insulation and the ability to preheat the cabin before driving, reducing the battery drain once underway.

Charging, however, tells a less flattering story. BYD promises a 10-to-80 percent fast charge in 32 minutes. Reality added about eight more minutes, enough to earn a “poor” rating in this category. Still, the Sealion 7 walked away with a four-star sustainability score and 73 percent overall—solid numbers for a large electric SUV.

Smaller EV, Bigger Winter Penalty

The Cupra Born didn’t fare as well. Lighter at 1,839 kilograms and running a smaller 60-kWh battery, the Born should have had an efficiency edge. Instead, winter hit it harder.

From a warm-weather range of 328 kilometers, the Born dropped to just 221 kilometers in cold conditions—a 33 percent reduction. That’s the kind of number that turns a casual road trip into a charging strategy session.

There was a bright spot. Green NCAP praised the accuracy of Cupra’s energy-consumption readings. Drivers see what the car is actually using, not an optimistic guess. BYD, by contrast, showed discrepancies in its consumption data, prompting a recommendation for a software update to deliver clearer, more reliable information.

Gas Cars: Predictable, Not Perfect

On the gasoline side, the BMW 5 Series and X2 behaved exactly as you’d expect. Fuel consumption went up in winter, but not dramatically—and certainly not catastrophically.

The 5 Series increased from 6.8 to 8.1 l/100 km, while the X2 rose from 7.1 to 8.0 l/100 km. The reason is simple: internal-combustion engines generate waste heat, which conveniently warms the cabin. Efficiency suffers a bit, but range anxiety never enters the conversation.

Green NCAP notes that these increases are modest and predictable, giving gasoline cars an edge in real-world confidence when temperatures plunge.

The Real Takeaway

From an environmental standpoint, the EVs still score well. The Sealion 7 and Cupra Born remain attractive options, especially for drivers who mostly stick to shorter trips. But winter exposes the weak points: range loss, longer charging times, and the added complication of a fast-charging network that still isn’t where it needs to be.

Long journeys in an EV during cold weather demand planning, patience, and a willingness to accept that official figures are more suggestion than guarantee.

Green NCAP’s message is clear. Electric-car manufacturers need better thermal management systems and greater transparency about cold-weather performance. Because nothing kills enthusiasm faster than a buyer who feels misled—especially when the temperature drops, the range shrinks, and the real-world numbers suddenly have very little to do with what was promised on paper.

Source: Green NCAP; Photo: Shutterstock

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