Genesis Says the GV90 Is Stiffer Without Its B-Pillar

The 2028 Genesis GV90 Neolun gives up its B-pillar for coach doors that open toward each other, and Genesis says the result is 12 percent stiffer than the standard GV90 with ordinary doors.

Genesis also says the pillarless body matches the standard car in crash testing. That claim rests on what the brand calls invisible armour: a hidden B-pillar built into the doors themselves, a concealed roll cage around the cabin and a hinge that lets a rear door weighing nearly 70 kilograms slide out and swing open without touching the front door. The coach-door setup, which Genesis calls the Neolun Arch Gate, is the first on any SUV with front and rear doors that open and close independently, and it is the reason the GV90 Neolun exists as a separate variant from the swing-door GV90.

Genesis explained the structure in the second of its GV90 technical releases, published October 23. Inside each door are dual beams of 1.8-gigapascal ultra-high-strength steel arranged vertically and horizontally, and four latches tie each door to the body with an upper stopper and a lower impact hook so that side-impact loads pass through the doors into the structure rather than stopping at a gap. Around the cabin, Genesis built what it describes as a reinterpretation of a race car’s roll cage: 1.5-gigapascal steel tubes, high-rigidity structural foam and a ring of horizontal and vertical members, with large high-pressure aluminum die castings at the rear door hinge mounts.

"We have designed a completely new structure, away from the conventional vehicle body," said Daehee Lee, head of the Genesis Body Design Group, in the release. The body is 72 percent aluminum, up from 35 percent on previous Genesis models, and a separate manufacturing release from October 27 puts the number of aluminum-to-steel joints at about 720, more than four times the previous platform, with the SUV built on a dedicated line at the Ulsan plant in Korea.

The hinge is the piece that makes independent doors possible. A normal rear-hinged door, as on the old Mazda RX-8 or Honda Element, can only open after the front door is out of the way. The GV90’s dual-motion hinge first slides the rear door slightly outward and backward from under the front door, then rotates it open, using a cast-iron center block to carry the load without wobble, an aluminum housing that cuts the mechanism’s weight by about 20 percent and more than 500 ball bearings along its rail. CarBuzz noted in its October 23 look at a Genesis video on the doors that the front door overlaps the rear door, which gives the seals a surface to press against and keeps wind noise out of the pillarless cabin. The doors open and close from inside with a button.

The safety case goes beyond the doors. Genesis fitted what it calls the world’s first roof airbag, which deploys forward along wires from the rear of the cabin to cover the entire glass roof in a rollover, and the company says it was tested in lateral-tilt rollovers and 110-kilometer-per-hour ramp tests. The GV90 carries 12 airbags in total, including a dual-depth front passenger bag that deploys in two stages depending on how far the seat is reclined, seat cushion airbags to stop occupants sliding under the belt, and curtain airbags that reach the third row. Genesis quotes a roof strength of 13,924 kilogram-force and at least 320 millimeters of occupant survival space in side-impact tests, against a 180-millimeter standard for an Excellent rating.

Underneath, the 123.5-kilowatt-hour battery sits behind a slider structure that pushes the motor and subframe beneath the pack in a high-speed frontal crash, a protective crossmember guards it from curbs and a deflector at the front redirects small-overlap impacts sideways. Genesis also points to its US record: since 2021, every new model it has launched has earned the highest IIHS rating. The pillarless doors are limited to the Neolun trims, and Genesis has not yet announced US pricing or an on-sale date; CarBuzz expects the SUVs early next year with the Neolun models in six-figure territory.

The HyundaiHQ Take

Coach doors without a pillar have been a concept-car trick for decades because the engineering is brutal, and the fact that Genesis is publishing beam ratings, roof strength and survival margins rather than just door photos suggests it expects skeptical buyers to check. The numbers only matter once the IIHS and NHTSA test a production Neolun, and that is the test Genesis should want, because a pillarless SUV that scores as well as a conventional one would be the strongest argument the brand has ever had that it belongs in the same conversation as Range Rover and Mercedes-Maybach.

More on the Genesis GV90

• Genesis’s Oldest Sedan Just Doubled Its Sales
• Genesis Gave the GV90 Its Thickest Glass Ever