Tag Archives: Genesis

News

Genesis Magma Racing GMR-001 Completes First Real Test at Paul Ricard

Genesis Magma Racing has taken its first serious step toward the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) grid. The team’s brand-new GMR-001 hypercar logged more than 500 laps over five days at Circuit Paul Ricard in late August, a baptism by fire aimed at shaking down the hybrid prototype ahead of its 2026 debut.

Early Focus: Systems Over Speed

For now, this isn’t about chasing lap times. The engineering crew, working alongside chassis partner ORECA, is dialed in on validating the car’s major systems, especially the complex hybrid powertrain anchored by a 3.2-liter twin-turbo V-8. Multiple software maps were tested as drivers cycled through different calibration setups.

“We had a program that we were able to follow, so that’s very promising for the whole team,” said Technical Director FX Demaison. “At the moment, we’re purely focused on software, especially on the powertrain. It’s a hybrid car with many features that we need to manage properly.”

Paul Ricard, conveniently close to both the team’s base and the car’s assembly workshop, offered the right blend of high-speed straights and technical sections to stress the hardware. As the laps piled up, engineers also began tinkering with the handling balance, an encouraging sign this early in development.

From Rolling Prototype to Real Race Car

Chief Engineer Justin Taylor admitted he didn’t expect the car to feel this sorted, this soon. “We’re getting to the point already where we are talking about the performance of the car, which I didn’t honestly expect to be doing,” Taylor said. “The drivers are giving us the feedback we need on all the systems and on the side, they’re already looking at how to make the GMR-001 fast.”

For veterans André Lotterer and Pipo Derani, Paul Ricard marked their first chance to lean on the car with proper race tires and in conditions more akin to the WEC calendar.

Lotterer was quick to praise the GMR-001’s fundamentals. “The feedback is very natural, instinctive and it’s fun to drive, but we are still working on everything.” Derani echoed that optimism: “It’s always an unknown when you jump into a new car. You have high expectations, but with the GMR-001 we have a good base to start working from.”

Teething Troubles, As Expected

No first test goes without its hiccups. The car suffered from a handful of minor gremlins—hardly a surprise with a clean-sheet design and a new engine. “It’s normal to have issues,” said Demaison. “This is why you go testing. We’re here to see as many problems as possible and to be able to fix them as quickly as possible.”

Between track sessions, engineers worked hand-in-hand with ORECA back at the workshop to patch and improve, returning to Paul Ricard with solutions in place.

The Long Road Ahead

The GMR-001’s first full test represents just the beginning of an exhaustive development plan. The coming months will be devoted to proving race-distance reliability, optimizing outright pace, and fine-tuning the team’s operations for the crucible of WEC competition.

If these early signs are any indication, Genesis Magma Racing’s leap into endurance racing isn’t a vanity project—it’s a serious campaign. And with a hybrid V-8 soundtrack and drivers who already sound impressed, the GMR-001 is shaping up as a legitimate contender in 2026.

Source: Genesis

News

Whisper Warriors: How Genesis is Redefining Silence on Four Wheels

You know the old cliché about electric cars: “They’re so quiet, you can hear the birds sing.” Lovely, unless you’re the sort of driver who actually enjoys driving. Because the truth is, silence is tricky. Take away the engine note — that mechanical soundtrack petrolheads live for — and suddenly every creak, rattle, and tire hum is amplified. In other words, silence is noisy business.

Hyundai Motor Group — the brains behind Genesis — has decided to tackle this paradox head-on. Not with more leather or fancier carpets, but with laboratories that look like they belong in NASA rather than an automotive R&D center. We’re talking anechoic chambers that eat sound for breakfast, VR-powered acoustic caves that simulate everything from a Seoul backstreet to the Nürburgring, and even chassis dynamometers covered in fake asphalt patches scanned by 3D cameras. Yes, they’re building virtual roads… indoors.

The Science of Silence

The core obsession here is NVH — that’s Noise, Vibration, and Harshness in industry jargon, or “the stuff that ruins your luxury car fantasy” in plain English. Genesis doesn’t just want to make its EVs quiet. It wants them to be elegantly quiet. The kind of hush where you can whisper to your passengers at 120 km/h and still be heard — not because you’re in a cocoon, but because the engineers have surgically removed every unwanted resonance, rumble, and boom.

Inside the Road Noise Testing Lab, a Genesis sits strapped to rollers textured with asphalt, cobblestone, and concrete clones. The car is driven in place while microphones record the acoustics with forensic precision. Low-frequency vibrations under 500 Hz — the kind that shake your bones rather than tickle your ears — are measured, tamed, and politely shown the door. If your suspension bushings aren’t up to the task, this is where Genesis finds out.

When VR Meets NVH

Here’s where it gets even more sci-fi. In the Immersive Sound Studio, engineers don VR headsets, fire up Unreal Engine (yes, the same one that powers Fortnite), and step into a full 3D soundscape. Road noise, wind buffeting, even the artificial whirr that EVs play outside to warn pedestrians — all simulated, analyzed, and tweaked.

Why? Because sound in isolation is deceiving. Play a recording of a car cruising at 100 km/h while sitting still, and your brain swears it’s louder than it actually is. Add VR visuals of a motorway flashing past your eyes, and suddenly your brain recalibrates. This isn’t just about killing noise — it’s about orchestrating it.

And Genesis is going further: mixing Ambisonics (25-channel 3D sound fields) with Dolby Atmos to fine-tune both NVH research and in-car entertainment. In practice, that means your cabin will not only be as quiet as a high-end recording studio but also double as one.

Why It Matters

It’s easy to scoff. After all, isn’t this just luxury-car fluff for the well-heeled? Not quite. The quieter and more refined an EV is, the more alive the rest of the experience feels. Your steering inputs, the suspension tuning, the sheer serenity of long-distance cruising — all of it depends on the absence of intrusive noise. It’s why Genesis keeps winning J.D. Power awards: they’ve figured out that luxury isn’t only about horsepower or chrome, it’s about how a car makes you feel.

And in the EV era, silence isn’t just golden. It’s the new performance metric.

So next time someone tells you that all EVs feel the same, remind them of this: some are built to go fast, some to go far. But Genesis? They’re building cars that make silence sing.

Source: Genesis

Motorsport

Genesis Magma Racing GMR-001: The Hypercar Awakens

Bare carbon, fat wheel arches, and an aura that says “I eat prototypes for breakfast”. That’s the GMR-001 — the first hypercar from Genesis Magma Racing, and it’s just rolled into the world after a successful shakedown. Built with the help of chassis wizards ORECA, this stealth bomber of endurance racing is the first of three development cars that will lay the groundwork for a 2026 FIA World Endurance Championship debut.

At the moment, it’s as naked as Adam in Eden — no paint, no frills, just raw carbon and menace. And yet, under the surface, lies Genesis Magma’s so-called “Hyperspeed” philosophy: progress at breakneck pace without cutting corners. “We’re passing milestones every day,” admits team principal Cyril Abiteboul — yes, the same Abiteboul once wrangling Renault’s F1 squad. Now, he’s shepherding Genesis into the white-knuckle world of endurance hypercars.

Building the Beast

This isn’t just another manufacturer dipping its toes into motorsport to sell a few extra SUVs. The GMR-001 has been engineered with intent. ORECA bolted together the first chassis, slotted in the engine, hybrid system and gearbox, lit the fuse, and handed it over to the Genesis engineers. From here on out, the car lives and breathes under Magma’s roof at Le Castellet — their soon-to-be-completed HQ where design, development, and race prep are converging like tributaries into a river of speed.

Drivers With Bite

Behind the wheel? None other than endurance titans André Lotterer and Pipo Derani. Both have already been sweating it out in the simulator, fine-tuning the virtual GMR-001 and setting baselines that’ll make the first track tests more than just glorified wheel-spinning. They’ve already had their first taste of the real car in a shakedown, checking that the electrics don’t explode and the mechanicals behave. Their verdict? Promising. Very promising.

The Road Ahead

Next stop: a punishing test program across Europe’s great circuits. Every lap will be dissected, data hoovered up, and solutions validated faster than you can say “Le Mans 24 Hours.” ORECA stays in the loop as long-term chassis partner, while Genesis engineers hammer away at fine-tuning the beast into a reliable, homologated weapon.

FX Demaison, Magma’s technical director, knows the score: “Every bit of running we do with the GMR-001 in 2025 is extremely valuable.” Translation? They’ve got one year to turn raw carbon into silverware.

And make no mistake, this is Genesis putting its flag firmly in enemy territory. They’re not here to make up the numbers. They’re here to punch Ferrari, Toyota, Porsche, and Peugeot square in the nose.

So remember the name: Genesis Magma Racing, GMR-001. Today it’s bare carbon and testing gear. In 2026? It might just be the car staring down the Mulsanne Straight with victory in its sights.

Source: Genesis