Styling
Unlike the pre-existing two Zeekr models (actually, Zeekr says it has nine distinct vehicle lines in 2025, but as most of these are restricted to Asia we're only talking about the European-market products here), the 7X doesn't have high-set headlights mounted on the top of its bonnet. That's because those two cars, and primarily the 001, were originally supposed to be sold as Lynk & Co machines, so their styling is informed by their hasty transition from the L&C umbrella to Zeekr's fold. The 7X, meanwhile, instead has a combined light strip and sensor array running laterally across its nose, which doesn't so much make us think of this Chinese brand but instead gives the SUV an appearance that's not a million miles away from that of a
Toyota bZ4X.
Measuring 4,787mm long, 1,930mm wide, 1,650mm tall and blessed with a 2,900mm wheelbase, it's a big old barge but thankfully it doesn't look too hefty or garishly imposing. By the same token, it's not very distinctive either. There's a coast-to-coast light bar on the back, almost a given in 2020s car design circles, and the dual-motor AWD model we're testing here also runs on 21-inch alloys (the single-motor 7Xs have 19s) with orange-painted brake callipers peeping out from behind them; two of the only exterior visual clues that you're looking at the flagship 7X, instead of one of the 'lesser' models. The roofline is slightly coupe-esque, without sacrificing interior headroom, and there are some attempts at dramatic swage and crease lines on the side to break up the light on the flanks of the body, but ultimately it is just another big hunk of large-SUV anonymity.
Doesn't help, of course, that Zeekr once again offers a truly minimal paint palette for the 7X (just like the 001 and X before it), with a mere four colours on offer - white, grey, black and Forest Green, the solitary interesting shade. Sigh.
Interior
A much stronger showing here, the 7X having an even nicer cabin than that of the 001 and X, which both have impressive interiors. Material finishing is generally excellent, especially for the main touchpoints like the wheel and the column stalks, and there's an attractive, admittedly minimalist design to the SUV's fascia. Zeekr wants to big-up the technology, to which end there's a 13-inch digital instrument cluster, a whopping 16-inch central touchscreen (running at an impressive 3.5K resolution) and then capping it all off is a gigantic 36.2-inch augmented-reality head-up display (HUD). The graphics and response rates on all of these are both reasonably sharp and quick respectively, although the 'live traffic' images that flash up in the cluster and the HUD (these are like a Tesla's system, showing you cars and trucks around you) need some refinement to be at their best. Beyond that, a monster 21-speaker, 2,160-watt premium surround-sound system and twin wireless charging pads for smartphones should further keep technophiles happy.
Ergonomically, the report is not so glowing. There is some physical switchgear in the 7X's cabin, but not much - and what there is turns out to be strangely baffling. For instance, there's a 'Mode' button on the centre stack, but that doesn't change any of the steering, suspension or brakes when you press it; instead, it only alters the throttle response. Zeekr's representatives assured us they were looking at putting 'the whole dynamic package' onto this button but it's beyond us as to why the engineers haven't done that already, given every other company in the automotive industry does so.
Further, adjusting any of the door mirrors, the steering wheel (for reach and rake) and the HUD requires a number of taps on the touchscreen, then using the buttons on the steering wheel's right-hand spoke to adjust these features. Zeekr is not alone in this particular method, but as we don't like this overly fussy arrangement in other cars, we're not prepared to let the Chinese newcomer off for the same mistake; just give us a column on or near the driver's door for the mirrors, one on the steering column for the wheel - and maybe then we'd be prepared to accept the HUD adjustment would have to be done through the screen, although it should be easy to save it to a driver's profile so that you move it around once and be done with.
There are also oh-so-slow, jerkily hesitant self-opening doors on the 7X, which is tech for tech's sake and a bloody nuisance when it's raining horizontally and you just want to get in the damned car quickly, and window switches which are the 'wrong' way around for their shape. If they were recessed, then yes - pulling back (up) to raise the window and pushing forward (down) to lower it would make sense. But on the odd, horizontal bar items Zeekr actually uses, it feels counter-intuitive to push away from you to get the window to drop.
Practicality
You really can't complain about this characteristic of the 7X. The driving position is good, with lots of electric adjustability, and the view out of the car is superb in most directions, save for the slightly pinched aspect of the tailgate screen visible in the rear-view mirror. And then there's the space. There's
tonnes of the stuff. Rear-seat passengers get a voluminous amount of leg- and headroom, the latter particularly impressive as every Zeekr 7X comes with a panoramic sunroof as standard - this being an item that normally results in less headroom, not more. A 543-litre boot at the back is a good size, with a further 42 litres available up front under the Zeekr's bonnet that will swallow charging cables; the company doesn't cite a maximum boot volume, but with its 60:40 split-folding rear seats dropped, we did find one online source which suggested there's 1,978 litres of capacity available and that's a figure that looks entirely believable. Thank the 7X's massive wheelbase for that.
And then there are the storage solutions. Which are seemingly
everywhere in the cabin. The 7X has covered cubbies in the armrests of its front doors. It has a huge compartment covered by a twin-hinged lid between the front seats. There's an 'under-tunnel' cavity beneath the wireless smartphone charging pads. A covered set of cupholders reside in what would ordinarily be the transmission tunnel. There's more storage, and a pair of USB sockets, in the central fold-down armrest in the rear. Three slide-out drawers can be found underneath the Zeekr's back bench. All the door pockets are massive. Honestly, if the occupants can't fit all of their clobber and belongings into the 7X's various helpful nooks and crannies, we'd politely suggest you need to declutter your lives to a significant degree.
Performance
Not to sound boastful, but we've driven many high-powered cars in our careers. Things with five-, six-, seven-hundred horsepower and more, and goliath torque figures too. Both ICE and EV. And, on the latter score, we've driven fast electric SUVs of similar outputs and kerb weights to the Zeekr 7X AWD. Like the
BMW iX M60. The related
Polestar 3 Dual Motor Performance Pack and the
Volvo EX90 Twin Motor AWD Performance. We've also been in any number of dedicated high-speed, high-thrills EVs, like the
Porsche Taycan Turbo, the
Audi RS e-tron GT and the mesmeric
Hyundai Ioniq 5 N. What we're trying to say here is that we think we ought to know what a 639hp, 710Nm electric SUV with AWD traction and a 2,535kg kerb weight in this trim (resulting in a rather modest 252hp/tonne overall) would feel like when subjected to full acceleration.
So what we say next, we say with a great degree of circumspection, deference and no mild degree of bamboozlement: but there's no way the Zeekr 7X AWD Privilege 'only' had 639hp and 710Nm. No way at all. It is utterly demented for roll-on acceleration, with none of that tailing-off of power you normally get from 60-100mph (the latter only obviously where legal and appropriate), or the sensation that by 100mph the increase in the rate of forward momentum would calm down significantly. Honestly, the way the numbers racked up in a dizzying blur on the Zeekr's instrument cluster when going from 50-90mph was almost cartoonish; they just whizz up to highly inappropriate pace, in no time at all and with no care for the laws of physics, if you dare to keep your right foot in for too long.
Now Zeekr's other two products in their flagship forms, these being the 544hp 001 and the 428hp dual-motor X, claim a 0-62mph time of 3.8 seconds. But neither of them felt anything like as rabid as the 7X, not for step-off and certainly not in the midrange. Quite why you need this sort of outrageous straight-line performance in what is ostensibly a family SUV is beyond us, but there's no doubting the potency of the AWD Privilege. Indeed, as we say, our only doubt about its performance stats relates to the official power and torque numbers being somewhat underplayed.
That's all well and good, but there are two drawbacks to all of this power in this section, and then a significantly bigger one which we'll come onto in the next part on ride and handling. Anyway, the first negative here is that the Zeekr 7X AWD squirrels about alarmingly over cambers and bumps if you're accelerating full-bore in a straight line. It doesn't track straight and true, instead wandering about notably and requiring a lot of steering inputs from the driver to keep it on a vaguely dead-ahead path.
The second is that the dual-motor AWD eats into its battery reserves far quicker than the next model down the tree, the Long Range (single rear motor, 422hp/440Nm, 100kWh power pack and 382 miles of one-shot capability). Zeekr claims 19.9kWh/62.1 miles, which is about 3.1 miles/kWh. However, driven somewhat more enthusiastically, we saw 33.8kWh/62.1 miles, which is a rather more tragic 1.8 miles/kWh. That's the EV efficiency equivalent of some monster V8 twin-turbo only getting 12-15mpg when you're 'on one', so you can see that you'd have to really, really need (or want) the AWD's mammoth speed to justify the lower range returns you're going to get in real life if you want to enjoy the performance.
Ride & Handling
The massive power of the AWD Privilege means that Zeekr wanted to suggest that this top-dog model is the driving enthusiast's choice in the three-strong 7X line-up (below the Long Range, there's another single-motor, rear-wheel-drive variant called the Core, with the same 422hp/440Nm outputs as the LR but with a 75kWh LFP battery fitted instead, resulting in 298 miles of theoretical maximum range). To that end, the Privilege has air suspension and adaptive dampers, instead of coil springs and passive shocks as on the Core and Long Range, and it also has more powerful brakes (larger and thicker front discs), denoted by those orange callipers.
Regrettably, this is a chassis that needs quite a lot of work. Weirdly, the Zeekr 7X isn't on some unknown Chinese platform that might explain its unruliness. Instead, it sits atop the Sustainable Experience Architecture (SEA), used underneath not only the 001 and X Zeekrs before it, but also (in various formats) for the
Polestars 4 and 5, the Lotuses (Lotii?) Eletre and Emeya, the
Volvo EX30, and all of the revived Smarts with those daft hashtag nameplates, specifically the #1, #3 and #5.
Furthermore, we went on record as saying both the Zeekr 001 and X models had good multimodal steering, with a healthy degree of 'light and shade' difference between the Comfort, Normal and Sport settings, while we even went further to say the 001 drove rather well all round (the X needed more dynamic work, mind). So we were kind of expecting good things from a machine for which its overlords felt 639hp and 710Nm were appropriate figures.
On the basis of this handling showing, they are not. The powerful motors in the Zeekr 7X AWD very quickly overwhelm the suspension, no matter if you're in Comfort, Normal or Sport for that, and because the three-mode steering is not as clearly defined from setting to setting in the SUV (you get a little more weight in Normal than Comfort, and then Sport compared to Normal, but the level of feel remains minimal throughout) then controlling the chassis when it breaks away is hard work.
In essence, the Zeekr feels like two completely separate cars bolted together in the middle. If you push it in the corners, a bold act given the copious amount of pitch, dive and lean the softly-softly suspension permits in the 7X's shell in the first place, what you get first of all is a load of glassy-feeling, push-wide understeer, before the torque vectors out to the back and the whole SUV snaps into wild oversteer. This latter aspect might be fun if a) you didn't have to get through all the understeer to access it first, b) the steering and body control were both better, and c) it wasn't so violently scruffy when it finally happens. The long and short of this is that the handling simply cannot cope with the Zeekr's vast amount of power, and in this instance we can't even blame the grip levels on some shonky rubber, as in our last (utterly terrifying) drive of a
Chinese electric SUV, as our test 7X was on Michelin Pilot Sports and the word is that the preferred tyre supplier for European markets will be Continental.
Thankfully, the Zeekr 7X works a lot better if you stop driving it like a hooligan. In our defence, we only did so because the company said it was fun to drive, so we thought we'd test that assertion. Nevertheless, we fundamentally agree with the concept of electric SUV owners never driving their vehicles in anger in the slightest, so it doesn't need to be some sort of hot hatch in disguise. To that end, we therefore suspect the single-motor 7X models will make far more sense if all you want to do is pootle about steadily. The ride comfort and rolling refinement on the AWD Privilege is largely good, especially once it has some speed under its wheels, but large compressions like sunken manhole covers will send a discomfiting, muffled thud through the Zeekr's superstructure, while its very low-speed ride on particularly lumpen surfaces (urban roads rucked up by underlying tree roots or even streets studded with speed humps and traffic-calming measures) reveals a brittle level of comportment. The air springs need to provide better wheel control at near-walking pace and a little more body composure at higher pace through corners, but generally the 7X is a nice thing to loaf about in.
Some final positive points on the Zeekr going forward: one, the AWD's chassis can be easily sorted, or at least significantly improved, simply by means of a software upgrade to the control program for both the air springs and variable dampers, rather than needing extensive and remedial physical surgery to the underpinnings; and two, we think the coil-sprung, lower-output 7X variants will be sweeter to drive. For handling and ride. Oh, and they'll be cheaper to buy. And give better range, too. So our main dynamic gripes here specifically pertain to the dichotomy between the monumental outputs of the AWD's drivetrain and the chassis that struggles to cope with said potency. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and all that.
Value
A hard section to give clarity on, given we are not expecting to see Zeekr's cars, 7X or otherwise, on sale in the UK before somewhere towards the end of 2026. For what it's worth, the expectation is that the company will offer an extensive and highly generous standard specification on all three variants of its plush SUV, as well as the potential for a ten-year, 125,000-mile warranty (on an optional extension) to back it up.
In the markets where it is sold, apparently the Zeekr 7X family starts from €54,000 and rises to just €60,000 or thereabouts for this mighty AWD Privilege. On current exchange rates, that equates to £46,000-£51,000, so assuming a bit on top for the right-hand-drive conversion, if a ballpark of £50,000-£60,000 was reasonable then the 7X would be a rival for the likes of the
Volkswagen ID.4,
Skoda Enyaq,
Ford Explorer,
Peugeot E-3008 and
Nissan Ariya, among more. And not one of these is as big nor grand-feeling inside as the Zeekr, nor can any of them (the weird, 435hp Ariya Nismo excepted) get near even the base 7X's 422hp, never mind this 639hp variant. It would also see the Zeekr usefully undercutting truly premium electric SUVs, such as the underwhelming
Audi Q6 e-tron and its ilk. Mind you, 'if' is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that statement, that's for sure.
A quick word on charging. The 7X has 800-volt capabilities and something called a 'Golden Battery', so it can replenish itself in super-quick time. The maximum DC charging rate is 480kW, somewhat academic as the peak rate we tend to get here in Europe is presently 350kW, and Zeekr says the 7X AWD would take just 13 minutes to get its 100kWh NMC battery from 10-80 per cent at such speeds. It's 16 minutes at 360kW (or 350kW, effectively, if you can even get that drawdown at UK chargers), but more like 45 minutes to an hour if you're only pulling 100kW at the rapid charging unit. It also has 22kW AC capability, meaning five-and-a-half hours for a 0-100 per cent top-up if you have the right unit; again, though, on a typical 7.4kWh domestic wallbox, you'd need 13.5 hours to get the Zeekr 7X's battery from completely flat to completely full.
Verdict
Accepting that the Zeekr 7X isn't even on sale here yet, this has been an eye-opening first encounter with the company's flagship SUV. Its eventual arrival time and list price when it finally does hove up on our shores will be crucial to its success (or otherwise), because if Zeekr gets those two things right then there's lots to like here - a huge, practical and classy cabin, smooth driving manners when piloted sedately, mammoth straight-line performance and useful one-shot range from all models.
That said, the car clearly needs work to meet our western sensibilities, too. The low-speed ride could do with cleaning up, some of the graphics in the cabin require refinement, additional and/or more sensible switchgear in the interior wouldn't hurt, and the control systems for the springs and dampers on the AWD need a good going over to make the handling considerably less wayward than it is right now. Sort those things out in the 18 months before the 7X arrives here, Zeekr, and you might just have a hit on your hands.
