It’s not often a feature in a car makes me actual squeal in delight and run to show everyone with eyes. But the 2022 Genesis GV70’s posture control and massage features did exactly that.
As most people do, I’ve forgotten some of the more minor lessons from my driver’s training days — one of the big ones being the ideal seating position. I used to be very meticulous about properly adjusting my seat so that my steering wheel hit the crease of my wrist when I extended my arm and so that my legs were at just the proper angle. I quite literally never let anyone drive my Mazda 2 — including a certified race car driver who once rode in my passenger seat — because I adamantly refused to have anyone mess with my seating position.
And then I got my big 1996 Suburban, and all hell proceeded to break loose. I sit fairly close to the steering wheel in that truck because it’s the only way I can both see over the dashboard and reach the fixed pedals.
Unfortunately, I now want to sit close to the steering wheel in every vehicle because it’s become muscle memory. And my body is usually achey after a long drive because of it.
So when I heard that the 2022 Genesis GV70 had both posture control settings and an anti-fatigue massage option, I rejoiced. Except, no one who drove the car before me during the get-together of female auto writers in Los Angeles this year had figured out how to do it.
To access posture control, you have to dive deep into the ‘settings’ menu and find the ‘Seat’ settings. I would have expected this option to be embedded somewhere else, like in the comfort settings, but I was incorrect.
Anyway: Navigate to the seat settings. Select ‘Smart Posture Care.’ It’s going to ask you to put in some details about yourself that you may not want to be honest about, including height, weight, and inseam. I assure you that you will want to be honest about it.
(If you don’t know your inseam, that’s fine. With your height and weight added, it generates a set of feasible inseams for you to choose from. I have no idea what my inseam is, but I picked the range that felt most accurate for my short-ass self.)
Once you’ve put all that in, let the posture analysis do its work. If you’re anything like me, that posture analysis is going to say you’re doing a very bad job of sitting. Thankfully, it also provides an option to adjust your posture. Select that, and let it do its thing. It’s going to change your seat’s height, distance from the steering wheel, and back angle to get you into shape.
The first time I figured this out, I immediately ran to grab one of my fellow writers. I popped her in the front seat, and I said, “Try this.” She was equally as impressed as I was. We then played around with different heights and weights to see what the seating position of a 6’6″ tall human would feel like. Just remember to adjust your mirrors, too.
It was wild. After I adjusted my seating, I went for a drive and was amazed at how much more comfortable I was when I wasn’t super cramped up behind the wheel.
Which leads me to my next favorite feature of the Genesis GV70: The anti-fatigue massage.
Most luxury vehicles worth their salt have some sort of massage function for the driver’s seat, which it calls an Ergo-Motion seat. I’ll skip over all the marketing speech associated with the way Genesis describes said seat by saying that, essentially, it’s a massage seat that’s designed to move your body in very specific ways to alleviate discomfort during long drives.
Yes, most massage seats purport something similar. But with the Genesis, you can actually really feel it. The Ergo-Motion massage targets your pelvis and lower back, rotating and adjusting them in ways that would probably make you feel better during a long drive. You can select the intensity and length of time you want to experience the massage, and you can also turn on heated or ventilated seats for added comfort. Those settings will be saved in the infotainment screen; any time you want to access the massage function, you press a button on the side of your seat.
I did not have a chance to try it out on the road, but by the time I drove the GV70, I’d been on the road for a week lugging around a heavy backpack and jumping in and out of countless cars. I was sore, and that massage hit right where I needed it to. It felt so good that, after I zipped around that day, I snuck out to the parking lot in my pajamas to eat churros and let the massage feature do its heavenly work. And I can tell you, I did not feel that way about any of the Mercedes or BMWs I drove that week.
I’ll have a full review of the Genesis GV70 later this week that includes my impressions from the test drive itself, but I have to say — the behind-the-wheel experience lives up to the hype of its cozy seats.
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