2026 Zeekr 8X review: this luxury large SUV could change the game

While Zeekr has been making hay out of its success with the fully electric 7X in recent months, there's another wave of impressive offerings coming from the Chinese brand.

And while the Zeekr 8X has many of the same hallmarks that made the Zeekr 7X medium SUV great, this new large SUV also has some important differences.

Firstly, this is a plug-in hybrid vehicle. This is a new direction for the brand.

But it's not your regular kind of plug-in hybrid. While exact specifications of what we'll get in Australia are not yet locked in, some of the details from China are quite scintillating.

Firstly, this plug-in hybrid packs a 70kWh battery, which is huge. It's actually bigger than what a lot of fully electric SUVs have. This battery can run on a new 900V architecture, which unlocks faster charging and discharging performance. On the latter, this means the battery can deliver more power to the electric motors and charge faster.

Speaking of electric motors, the 8X currently comes with the choice of two or three electric motors. For the latter, you've got bonkers peak outputs of 1030kW and 1410Nm. That's not a typo. Nor is the claimed 0–100km/h dash time of a shade under 3.0 seconds.

There's also a dual electric motor version, with 'only' 660kW and 935Nm, which can hit triple digits in a claimed 3.7 seconds.

This combines with a 2.0-litre turbocharged petrol engine with 205kW/410Nm, which mostly acts as a range extender to charge up that big battery. Similar to a Denza or BYD Shark, this petrol engine can connect to the front wheels and provide propulsion at highway speeds.

The electric-only driving range is relatively low for a battery of this size, at 328km on the lenient CLTC cycle. In the real world, that would likely be lower.

Why? Blame the weight (around 2800kg), as well as the focus on outputs and straight-line performance.

So no, this Zeekr 8X (and the 9X, for that matter) won't be the most frugal hybrid out there. That being said, running costs could still be quite low, depending on how much you're paying for electricity.

There's also dual-chamber air suspension, electromagnetic adaptive dampers and active roll bars. Its 22-inch forged wheels are wrapped in Michelin Pilot Sport 5 tyres, and big brakes feature six-pistons up front with a 412mm disc, and four-pistons at the rear with 364mm disc diameter at the back.

While the five-seat model is all we have to look at for the time being (there might be a six-seat, three-row model coming), the interior of the Zeekr 8X is no doubt impressive.

It's not just from the huge amount of digital interface that you get, with massive twin screens (one in the centre and one for the front passenger) and a neat-looking digital driver's display.

There is plenty of quality and detail inside, with a level of maturity in the design that we don't often see from emerging Chinese luxury brands.

And while Zeekr might not yet be a 'renowned' luxury brand, there's no doubt that this is a proper luxury interior.

Even though it can be had with an intense red finish on the inside, the 8X cannot help but feel good. The seats have loads of comfort and adjustment available, with Mercedes-Benz-like buttons on the doors to make your adjustments. And, of course, there is heating, ventilation, memory, and massage here.

Grab handles on the centre console have a certain Mercedes-Benz vibe as well. The lidded centre console is big, there is a small nook of extra storage underneath, and two wireless charging pads.

Physical controls are limited to some of your driving modes, air suspension control and active damping. There are some buttons below the screen (similar to the 7X), but most of your controls need to run through the screen. Although, the physical volume control is nice to have.

In the second row, family practicality is good. There's plenty of space and good width to best utilise the three-seat bench. The floor is flat, there are pop-out tables on the back of the front seats, and the choice of materials and finish continues uninterrupted in the back. The seats are comfortable, visibility is good, and the sense of luxury doesn't slow down.

The boot of the Zeekr 8X is capacious, with no third row getting in the way. The sheer size of that battery under the floor means there's no spare wheel or big chunk of sub-floor space here, but the room on offer up top is plenty.

The interior is impressive, yes, but the driving experience of the Zeekr 8X perhaps gives the biggest surprise.

Now, a big caveat here. Our initial test drive was very short, with only a few minutes behind the wheel. It was over in China, on a closed circuit that doesn't mimic Australian conditions. However, it was an insightful first taste.

Seeing an electric car brand turn its attention towards PHEV power makes me worried, because the modern-day plug-in hybrid is such a complex beast to get right.

But Zeekr has done the smart thing here, when you're thinking about a smooth and salubrious driving experience. With no shortage of grunt available through the battery and electric motors, this is, for the most part, an electric car in terms of how it drives.

Acceleration is brutal. It's fast out of the hole, piling on speed up to 100km/h in a manner that a 2.8-tonne vehicle has no right to do. Air suspension and active dampers help with the launch, but the big Zeekr still sits back on its haunches a bit when it gets moving.

That advanced chassis technology is required to keep a solid rein on the kind of weight we have to contend with here, and the short test run we did showed positive signs. A sharp U-turn at low speeds was well behaved, without any under-steering lurch or big moment of body roll. And blasting over the top of some ripple strips at 60km/h was also impressive.

But, Australian country roads, potholes and wallowing surfaces might yield some extra challenge for this chassis to deal with. So we'll hold fire on a full verdict until we can be more certain.

Through a swerve-and-avoid section of witches' hats showed the Zeekr 8X to be compliant and well managed, without being overly sharp or darty through the steering and directional change. Behaved and controlled, which is a feat in itself considering the kind of weight we are dealing with here.

We can't really give a full verdict on the Zeekr 8X, because we are yet to know a few crucial things. Price is one, even though we've got indications it will be around the $80,000 to $90,000 mark when it lands in Australia.

We don't have a clear picture of the vehicle's efficiency, and we want to spend more time getting to know how it drives and rides in real-world conditions.

But on first impressions, this is a car that should really put the regular range of luxury car brands on notice. It's not just a car that has a whole bunch of fancy features thrown at it.

Rather, it feels more inherently premium. How it looks on the outside, how it looks and feels on the inside, and (on first impressions) how it drives are a step up from what we have experienced previously from the brand.

Expectations were high since our experience with the 7X, but this first taste was anything but deflating. Hybrid power is deftly applied here, not upsetting the smooth and serene experience we expect from this brand.

And while the absurd complexity of this vehicle could easily be managed in the tuning and engineering, Zeekr seems to be on the right path of quality in the driving experience.

Sam Purcell has been writing about cars, four-wheel driving and camping since 2013, and obsessed with anything that goes brum-brum longer than he can remember. Sam joined the team at CarAdvice/Drive as the off-road Editor in 2018, after cutting his teeth at Unsealed 4X4 and Pat Callinan’s 4X4 Adventures. Off-road writer of the Year, Winner - Sam Purcell

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