Best Luxury SUV for 2023

Oh, look, Genesis is back. The GV80 is also a constant star in our best-of lists, because it's one of the best midsize luxury SUVs in the US.

In fact, we've waxed poetic about the GV80 so often that we're running out of ways to describe it. It takes the slicker silhouette of the GV70 and adds some rectilinearity, giving it a slightly more macho appearance. But make no mistake, the interior remains mighty sumptuous and filled with quality cabin tech. Throw the 3.3-liter V6 under the hood, and this SUV will scoot, too.

In the car world, it's not very hard to have your cake and eat it, too. Of all the largest luxury SUVs on the market, none exemplifies that as well as the Alpina XB7.

Alpina is BMW's resident zhusher-upper. Starting with the BMW X7 as a platform, Alpina massages the three-row SUV until it's even more luxurious and even more powerful. Its 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8 makes 612 horsepower and 590 lb-ft of torque, yet it still rides better than most vehicles, even with some honkin' wheels and thin tires. Slap it into Sport mode, and the XB7 will do a better impression of a sports car than some actual sports cars. It's a hard act to top, truly.

Porsche has long had a lock on the performance luxury SUV market, producing some properly prodigious models. But none is quite as wild as the Cayenne Turbo GT.

The Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT is the first SUV to carry Porsche's vaunted GT badge, which is reserved for its highest-performance vehicles. There's a twin-turbo V8 underhood making 631 hp and 626 lb-ft of torque, enough to shove this large SUV to 60 mph in just 3.1 seconds. But the Turbo GT is no drag-strip dandy; it has the suspension chops to carve canyon backroads with anything else wearing that GT badge on the back. You'd have a hard time finding this kind of performance envelope in most other manufacturers' non-SUV lineups.

Toyota and Lexus have a long, strong history with hybrid-electric powertrains. Throw a radically revised SUV into the mix, and you have the 2022 Lexus NX, which rocks.

The 2022 NX brings some cleaner looks outside, but what matters most is tucked away in the cabin. It's the first Lexus to utilize Lexus Interface, an in-house redesign of Lexus' formerly terrible infotainment system. The NX is also loaded with every bit of safety tech its parent company has to offer. The NX 350h gas-electric hybrid makes 239 hp, nothing to shake a stick at, and it's quite the smooth operator. 

Plug-in hybrids allow people to drive small distances on electric power alone, with a gas engine operating as a backup when the juice runs out. But with the BMW X5 xDrive45e, even medium-length commutes may fall within this SUV's prodigious electric-only range.

The X5 xDrive45e uses a 24-kilowatt-hour battery, granting this SUV an electric-only range of 30 miles. Longer-range luxury PHEVs are in the works, but they're not out quite yet, so the BMW retains its crown. Thankfully, there's more to like about this car, as well, like its net output of 389 hp and 443 lb-ft, as well as the fact that it drives really nicely.

Jeep's most luxurious model to wear the badge just so happens to be one of the most capable when it comes to hauling around a bunch of stuff. 

The 2022 Jeep Wagoneer -- which is still large, just not as large as the Grand Wagoneer -- has a max tow capacity of 10,000 pounds. That bests competitors like the Lincoln Navigator by over 1,000 pounds. Heck, the Grand Wagoneer can also tow a whole bunch, but at 9,850 pounds, it's a hair below its slightly smaller sibling.

You may only ever see a Mercedes-Benz G-Class parked outside of a high-end mall, but rest assured, if owners had to hit the dirt in a hurry, they'd be glad they bought the G-Class.

The G-Class's boxy aesthetic harkens back to the vehicle's military roots, where ruggedness wasn't just a perk, it was a requirement. These days, the G-Class is a little softer around the edges, but with locking differentials aplenty, ample approach and departure angles, potent four-wheel drive and more, the G-Class is ready to handle just about anything. And it'll coddle you in soft leather the whole way there.

Jeep went all-out when creating the full-size Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer, after letting competitors like Ford and GM run rampant through the segment for years without a fight. But now that the three-row Grand Wagoneer is here, it's already making a mark, and a good one, at that.

No matter how you measure luxury, the Grand Wagoneer stacks up with the best of 'em. There is tech aplenty inside, whether it's the multiple high-resolution displays on the dashboard or the 1,375-watt, 23-speaker McIntosh sound system. The interior is thoughtfully designed and relies on some very nice materials. It's also quite the smooth operator on the road. If you need to move three rows' worth of whatever -- people, animals, cargo, you name it -- there aren't too many cushier ways to do it. Oh yeah, and it'll tow nearly 10,000 pounds.

After taking an early spin in Cadillac's first battery-electric SUV, I have to say that tech aficionados will be all over this thing like white on rice.

The Cadillac Lyriq is a technological tour de force. Its massive single-piece screen covers most of the dashboard and features Google integration, Unreal Engine graphics and some of the best menu layouts we've seen in a car to date. It also packs Super Cruise, the best hands-free highway driving assistant on the market, sailing effortlessly over pre-mapped stretches of highway. It's also extremely compliant on the road, really hammering home that luxury-car vibe. It's the best non-performance car Cadillac has built in decades, and it should stay at the cutting edge of in-car tech for some time.

For this category, we turned to the safety wizards at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which puts cars through a battery of crash tests that go above and beyond what the federal government uses in its five-star ratings system. Of all the luxury SUVs to earn the IIHS' Top Safety Pick Plus award, the nonprofit's highest honor, the 2022 Acura RDX is at the top.

Now, a number of luxury SUVs have earned Top Safety Pick Plus and achieved the best scores in all the Institute's major categories, so we have to dig a little deeper into the scoring. The RDX performed the best out of any luxury SUV in every sub-category rating, with a score of Good in every single place it was measured. Competitors may have had similar overall scores, but a couple Adequate ratings in areas like leg protection put them behind the Acura.

The Mercedes-Benz EQS is an extremely good electric luxury sedan -- in fact, it's the best one available right now. So, it stands to reason that adapting that goodness into an SUV body will generate an equally excellent creation.

We'll be taking our first spin in the 2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV later this year, but we're already excited, and we're optimistic that it'll capture the same charm as the EQS hatchback. The interior carries all the same tech, including the dashboard spanning Hyperscreen. Its 107.8-kilowatt-hour battery should provide hundreds of miles of emissions-free cruising, and it'll be available in two different flavors to start, with the more potent version producing an impressive 536 hp and 633 lb-ft. We're stoked.