Battery size: 75 - 100 kWh
E-Rating™: B
Max charge rate: 360 kW
Range: 298 - 382 miles 
Zeekr 7X - Introduction
Shall we start with an introduction to Zeekr? Yes, let's do that. Right - back in 2021, Chinese mega car maker, Geely (which also owns Smart, Volvo, Polestar, Lotus, and those electric black cabs you see all over London) decided to try and put a stop to Tesla selling so many of its cars in China by coming up with a direct rival.
Zeekr was born in 2021, and along came a couple of cars. Then last year, it unveiled plans to win over European buyers with three new models. Confusingly, this puts it in direct competition with Geely’s other electric brands like Volvo and Smart, although a bit of sibling rivalry hasn’t done brands like Kia and Hyundai, or Volkswagen and Skoda any harm.
Anyway, that’s where Zeekr is at, and this is the 7X model. It’s a posh, all-electric SUV already on sale in the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway - and it's heading over to UK buyers soonish. Likely in 2026. It’s going to be offered with 75- or 100 kWh batteries, and a claimed WLTP range of 298- for the rear-wheel drive smaller battery, 382 for the rear-wheel drive big battery, or 337 if you want the high-performance, all-wheel drive model. It's not short of performance, either, but more about that when you read on! Let’s see what it's got to win us over with...
Styling and Dimensions
Looks wise, I rather like the Zeekr 7X. Maybe it’s a bit generic, but it’s smart and modern looking, and definitely inoffensive. At 4.8 metres long and 2.1 metres wide (including the wing mirrors), the 7X is a very similar size to the Model Y that it’s targeting.
What Geely has been very clever at doing is combining its know-how at building electric cars with the design skills that exist in some of those brands it's bought. It’s been designed in Europe at Zeekr’s Global Design Centre, in Sweden, where Nicki went to have a good look around this new electric family SUV.
I think the European roots do come through. The 7X looks sleek and quite sculpted, with Matrix LED headlights and that full-length rear light cluster making it quite eye-catching (although everything has a rear light bar, these days, doesn’t it?).
Do you like it? It looks quite different to the sleek, new Tesla Model Y, so that’s got to be a good thing for those of us who like a bit of variety.
Interior
Right, the Zeekr is pretty excellent inside, although I’d caveat that with the fact that the car that we looked around is a top-spec Zeekr 7X Privilege. It’s really spacious, and feels quite luxurious – I think it probably feels classier than the Tesla, to be honest, although I’ve not sat in the new Model Y with its improved cabin finish!
You get heated and cooled front massage seats with loads of different settings, and a 16-inch ultra-slim touchscreen with a Snapdragon chip. No, I don’t really know what that is, either, but it makes for extra-fast screen responses. Predictably, there aren’t really any buttons, and the whole thing is controlled through the screen, but you do get a digital readout behind the steering wheel, and you can add a huge 36-inch head-up display.
You won’t struggle for rear passenger space, either; there’s tons of head- and legroom, as well as two sets of Isofix fittings, and the seats slide for-and-aft so that you can prioritise people or luggage. The Zeekr 7X got a five star Euro NCAP rating in crash tests, so there’s nothing to worry about on the safety front.
Boot Space
The Zeekr 7X gets a very decent 537-litres of boot space, which is almost as much as you get in the Skoda Enyaq – still one of the most practical EVs you can buy. It’s hard to compare boot space with the Tesla, as the American brand gievs boot capacity up to the roof rather than the loadbay cover, which is really annoying. Looking around the Zeekr, I reckon it’s roughly on a par with the Tesla for sheer space back there. There’s also a huge 62-litre ‘frunk’ in the rear-wheel drive models, or that drops to 42-litres in the Privilege AWD model, which is ideal for keeping your cables safely out of the way.
Battery, Charging and Efficiency
The 75kWh Zeekr 7X Core RWD is the cheapest model in the range, and gets a lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) battery, for a WLTP range of 298 miles. The Long Range RWD gets the lithium-ion NMC battery, for a range of 382 miles, while the Privilege AWD gets the same battery but has a huge 631bhp for a 0-62mph time of 3.8 seconds.
Unlike the Tesla Model Y, the Zeekr gets an 800V charging system for charging speeds of up to 360kW, making this one of the fastest-charging electric cars in the world. It’s capable of a 10-80% charge in just 16 minutes, even with the huge 100kWh battery on board.
Vehicle-to-load (V2L) is standard, too, and will power your devices at up to 3.3kW.
Motors, Performance and Handling
It's a bit of a sleeper, the Zeekr 7X. It doesn't look like a performance car, but the rear-wheel-drive cars get an impressive 421bhp, which will power it from 0-62mph in 6.0 seconds. The dual-motor, all-wheel drive version comes with an astonishing 630bhp, however, so the 0-62mph sprint time drops to a quite comical 3.8 seconds. Tesla doesn't have the Model Y Performance variant out, yet, but you can bet that it'll be similar to the AWD Zeekr 7X on pace and power, so it's not like Zeekr's the only one doing unnecessarily rapid electric family SUVs.
Possibly more surprising is that it does actually handle that power very well - even in the dual motor model that I drove out in Portugal. It swings nicely into corners, the body control isn't too noticeable and there's lots of grip. It's just a very confident, yet brutally fast car. Is it a sports SUV in the way that the Porsche Macan is? No, not at all, but then it's nowhere near that price range and it is exactly the kind of unflappable, comfortable, yet monumentally fast transport that buyers will appreciate.
Although I haven't driven them yet, I'd settle for one of the lower powered rear-wheel drive models, although I do wish that Zeekr would offer a more modest all-wheel drive version as a lot of us European buyers like four-wheel drive for a bit of all-weather peace of mind yet don't want the crazy performance. Just a suggestion, there, Zeekr... After all, the 7X deals just fine with all this huge performance, but it's just plain unnecessary in this sort of car. Especially when it's being driven on roads that were designed a few thousand years ago, for a horse and cart.
As for the brake regen', the Zeekr has got a more moderate default setting that's very easy to get along with, or there's a one-pedal mode that - annoyingly - you have to access through the touchscreen. It works well, though. Nothing too grabby or jerky! Overall, the Zeekr 7X is a quiet and confident drive, and I rather like it. It'll also tow a 2,000kg braked trailer, which makes it one of the best in class, although options like the Audi Q6 e-tron and Polestar 3 will tow even bigger loads.
Price and Equipment
Prices for the Zeekr 7X start at £44,090 for the RWD Core mode, while the RWD Long Range comes in at £46,600 and the top-spec Privilege AWD costs £52,400. That sounds expensive at first, but it’s actually seriously cheap compared with a lot of rivals, and even undercuts the Skoda Enyaq – never mind the new Tesla Model Y, which starts at well over £60,000 at launch in the UK.
The RWD Long Range seems the sweet spot to us, not only as it gets the huge range of over 380 miles, but also because it gets 415bhp for a 0-62mph time of 6.0 seconds, which sounds like the kind of punchy but manageable performance that a family SUV should have.
Verdict
I really like the Zeekr 7X. If it cost the same, or more, as a Tesla or any of its premium rivals, I think it’d really struggle to justify itself given that it feels like such an unknown quantity to buyers – even though we do know that Geely builds great cars. But if Zeekr can really bring the 7X to the UK in 2026, at the prices it says it can, it could be a huge hit because this is a lot of car for the money.
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