2026 Zeekr 7X Long Range review

Being an innovator sucks. Case study after case study shows that, more often than not, being a follower is a far more profitable tactic.

You take fewer risks, you let the trailblazers make all of the costly mistakes, pick off the early adopters, and then you swoop in with an optimised second-gen version of the pioneer product and scarf a big slice of those mass-market sales volumes.

Say hello to the Zeekr 7X, the vehicle that aims to piggyback off Tesla's formula and appeal to an even broader audience.

What's more, the Zeekr 7X is one of the most talked about new cars for sale in Australia in 2026, and for good reason. Put simply, it delivers what seems a wholly unlikely amount of car for your money.

We've already driven the entry-level $57,900 plus on-road costs, 7X RWD and the range-topping $72,900 plus ORCs dual-motor Performance rocketship, but the $63,900 plus on-roads rear-drive Long Range almost looks a no-brainer as the smartest pick of this particular trio.

It not only features a stack more gear than the base RWD, but also gets a bigger 100kWh battery, which lifts range from 480km to a hale and hearty 615km radius of operations.

By contrast, a Tesla Model Y Long Range fronts up with a smaller battery and, consequently, a slightly less impressive 600km range but, in some form of Palo Alto voodoo, it also manages to do this with dual motors on board. Colour us impressed.

It also means that the Tesla steps off the line more crisply, recording a 4.8-second 0–100km/h time versus the Zeekr's 6.0sec showing. That's hardly sluggish, but if stoplight bragging rights mean anything to you, model for model, the Teslas have the edge.

It's a very different story when you take up residence behind the wheel of the Zeekr 7X Long Range. Suddenly the Model Y looks about as plushly equipped as a cell at Alligator Alcatraz.

Wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay? Check. Full-length motorised sun-blind? Yep. Huge, colour head-up display? A-huh. A 21-speaker, 2160W Yamaha stereo system? You got it. How about 14-way power-adjustable seats with memory, heating, cooling and massage functions for both driver and front passenger? Standard. Electrically reclining rear bench? Naturally.

It's exactly this richness of experience inside the 7X Long Range that makes it feel such compelling value for money. It does showroom wow factor extremely well, helped in no small part to exterior styling which, to this eye at least, looks a lot better resolved than the somewhat gawky lines of its key competitors.

It seems to have that base covered, too. Cruising down the freeway, it feels serene and composed. The adaptive cruise control is doing a great job with well-calibrated braking and lane centring. Refinement is good, with a little bump and thump entering the cabin over coarser concrete sections of road, but it all feels well controlled. Then the traffic backs up.

I know a number of cross-country alternative routes I can take to get home, so I dive off the freeway and out onto some minor roads in the hills. There the story takes a bit of a turn.

That polished composure when little was being asked of the suspension vanishes. It becomes jittery and stressed, as if this combination of amplitudes and frequencies is like nothing it has been exposed to in testing, I assume. In short, the ride quality doesn't feel optimised for typical Aussie B-roads. It never quite settles.

Buyers can instead dig into their pockets and opt for the flagship 7X Performance, which gets a higher-spec adaptive suspension system, but it's my contention that paying around $70K all-up including on-roads for a 7X Long Range entitles you to expect better from its basic dynamics.

Front-end grip is strong through corners, but in order to get the best from the 7X, it pays to manage its weight transfers quite gently. It's a big, heavy car, so the slower your hands on the way into a corner, the better results you get. Try to bully it and it gets a bit messy.

You can switch out the stability control if you suddenly get the realisation that you're in a 310kW rear-drive car, but it's something you'll probably only do once.

It's certainly muscular-feeling. Away from standstill, it'll dip into the high fives to 100km/h. That's about the sweet spot for EV acceleration, where it feels satisfyingly rapid without being so quick that it starts to feel like a gut-churning theme park ride.

Later that evening, I take the car out for another assessment drive. On a freeway stretch the adaptive cruise control displays an odd characteristic. As I go to switch it out by brushing the brake pedal, it goes into maximum regen braking with a thump, almost hanging me off my seatbelt. The display flashes up a message saying "DCC cannot decelerate warning".

I later discover that the 7X can misbehave if you use the brakes to switch off the adaptive cruise. The one-pedal driving mode was not activated, and the recommended course of action is apparently to tap up on the gear selector stalk to disengage. Nevertheless, it doesn't feel like an action the car ought to be doing.

Returning home, I go to reverse onto my driveway. As the 7X registers the steepish drive, the autonomous emergency braking system throws the brakes on hard, convinced it is reversing into something solid. The car comes to an instant stop, bouncing back off its springs.

I try to replicate it with a few attempts, both forwards and in reverse, but it never repeats. Weird.

I'm now left a little crestfallen by the Zeekr 7X Long Range. There's so much promise in this vehicle that it seems frustrating that it blots its copybook with these sloppy software calibrations. And Australian suspension tuning would certainly go a long way to making it a more relaxing ride on country roads.

So much else is so good, and that's almost part of the problem. The power deployment from the rear-mounted motor is creamy smooth, the steering is good, the space inside is a winner and the interior finish is excellent.

I'm not a big fan of its mirrors, though. The door mirrors are too small and the glass is very flat, which means that the field of view is a bit pinched as a result. The interior rear-view mirror is one of the only touchpoints on the entire car that feels a bit low-rent.

The camera systems in the 7X are excellent, though. The fidelity of the images projected onto the screen is such that you can tell if the guy behind skipped a shave this morning. The 360-degree surround view is exemplary, and there's even a camera in the B-pillar next to the driver's head to monitor rear seat occupants.

The infotainment system is good, if not quite as logically presented as Tesla's. Still, the bonus of having Android Auto and Apple CarPlay functionality cannot be overstated. The stereo is predictably brilliant, and even features tiny speakers in the headrest so that you can hear a phone conversation but nobody else in the car can.

Another thing I loved is that the full feature set of the driver's seat is mirrored by the front passenger seat, so your partner won't feel as if they've missed out when you crank up the massage function.

On the subject of the cabin, a couple of observations. Unlike in a Tesla, you do get a full motorised blind that covers the glass roof, and very good it is too. However, unlike in the top Performance trim that features genuine leather seat trim, in the Long Range you're sitting on dark polyurethane material that looks like leather, but feels a little spongier.

Park the car in the sun and it also gets extremely hot. That heat soak spreads throughout the cabin. The black touchscreen can get so hot that it's hard to use, which is key to activating the much needed seat coolers and to jack the air conditioning up to maximum.

Unfortunately, both seem outmatched by the Aussie summer. Even on their strongest setting, the seat coolers barely make their presence felt, and the air-con seemed to take at least half an hour of driving before the cabin cooled adequately. By that time you've already got a broad stripe of sweat down the back of your shirt, which isn't ideal.

I loved the fun feel of the exterior speaker, which allows you to broadcast your voice outside of the vehicle, play funny sounds, give a courtesy thanks to other road users and such like. The vehicle needs to be in park to do so, Tesla having found out the hard way that operating its Boombox while driving contravened US regulations, sparking a huge recall in the process.

There is a range of simulated sounds that you can operate while driving, a couple of which can be broadcast from the speaker, ranging from a generic EV swishing sound to a truly terrible internal combustion engine impression.

Everybody I spoke to on the phone while in the 7X complained that they could barely hear me. Apparently this is a known bug that involves interference with the noise cancellation that Zeekr has subsequently issued an over-the-air fix for.

To get the best out of the 7X, you need the connected app, which we – as mere journalists – did not have access to. This allows you to easily access the memory functions for the driving position, precondition the cabin temperature and so on, so owners will have a richer experience.

The space in the rear is vast, with great head and leg room. Open the sun blind, recline the rear bench and it feels a very pleasant place to be. You can snuggle your feet below the front seats for more space, and you can even adjust the position of the front passenger seat from the rear if you want even more space.

The sense of expansiveness is partly due to the 7X's huge 2900mm wheelbase. That's a smidgen longer than the 2890mm of a Tesla Model Y, and is even more generous than a monster like a current seven-seat Toyota LandCruiser Prado (2850mm).

The centre armrest folds down to reveal a couple of cupholders and USB outlets (one A and one C), and there's also a set of sliding drawers beneath the seat cushions to keep your valuables out of sight. That's good because the car we're driving did not have a parcel shelf or blind for the 539-litre luggage bay.

There is some underfloor storage in the boot, and there's a 62-litre cubby beneath the bonnet that you might well use to stow your charging cables. Sadly, when we shut the bonnet we noticed a very poor panel fit – perfectly flush on the passenger side, but with a significant overbite on the driver's.

On the topic of charging, you might well have heard that, at the time of writing this at least, the Zeekr 7X is the fastest-charging electric car for sale in Australia. That only applies to the smaller battery of the base model. That said, the Long Range is only a fraction slower, still happy to charge at a peak speed of 420kW versus 450kW for the base version.

Given that the fastest chargers have typically been 350kW units, with 400kW chargers only just starting to be rolled out, in the real world there's no practical difference at the moment. The 7X Long Range will take whatever DC charge you throw at it.

The shape of the charge curve is particularly impressive. Owners have reported seeing 24–80 per cent charging taking just 12 minutes, and the 7X seems to hold onto its charging rate past 80 per cent extremely well, only tailing off as it ticks past 90 per cent charge. You genuinely could break up a 400km round trip with less than 10 minutes at a charger.

My week with the Zeekr 7X Long Range involved a series of swings between delight and disappointment. It feels as if it's only a handful of tweaks away from genuine excellence. The list of fixes is relatively short, but they are significant.

The suspension tune is priority one. Beefing up the cooling and eking the residual quirks out of the driver assist system ought to be next on the list. The Chinese work fast and listen to feedback, so I have no doubts that the 7X will have these issues ironed out and fast. When it does, it'll be extremely hard to beat and will give vehicles like the Tesla Model Y, the Kia EV5 and the MG IM5 something to think about.

Now? This 7X Long Range is so close to excellence that it seems a shame these calibration issues hold it back. It feels like a car that needs to be better tweaked to suit Australian conditions.

It's easy to forget how far it has come and so quickly. The 7X Long Range is an accomplished and competent offering from a brand that didn't exist in Australia a mere 18 months ago.

Where it'll be in another 18 months is the scary proposition, for its rivals at least. For Australian buyers, it's a tantalising proposition.

Andy brings almost 30 years automotive writing experience to his role at Drive. When he wasn’t showing people which way the Nürburgring went, he freelanced for outlets such as Car, Autocar, and The Times. After contributing to Top Gear Australia, Andy subsequently moved Down Under, serving as editor at MOTOR and Wheels. As Drive’s Road Test Editor, he’s at the heart of our vehicle testing, but also loves to spin a long-form yarn.

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