Looks like a Porsche and priced like a Kia? This may be the most talked-about new car in Australia

Each month, the list of Australia’s best-selling cars tends to tell a similar story.

The top-10 is heavy with utes and SUVs from familiar faces like Toyota, Ford and Mazda, plus electric cars from major players like Tesla and BYD. The biggest upset you’ll tend to see is when a RAV4 switches places with a CX-5.

In July 2026, however, those paying close attention would have noticed a new entrant to the top 10 – a car that wasn’t even on sale in Australia a year ago.

Edging out the Mazda CX-5 to take 10th place was the Zeekr 7X – a sleek, understated all-electric medium SUV from a relatively unknown brand.

The 7X is so understated, in fact, that anyone not already familiar with the brand might struggle to identify it from a quick glance.

All sleek lines and minimalist badging, it could easily be mistaken for a Porsche Macan. The main difference is that the 7X is half the price of a Porsche – kicking off from $57,900 before on-road costs.

That might be why the Chinese-made SUV amassed more than 2000 pre-orders before anyone could even take it for a test drive.

Owned by Geely – the same Chinese conglomerate behind Volvo – Zeekr only started selling cars in its native China in 2021 and arrived on Australian shores in late 2024.

The 7X landed here in August 2025 as Zeekr’s third model in Australia. With good looks, an appealing price, up to 615 kilometres of range and the ability to charge faster than any other electric car in the country, it immediately turned the brand’s fortunes around.

Before the 7X appeared, the Chinese upstart had been fighting to establish sales footing in the face of intimidating rivals from the likes of Tesla and BYD, the latter of which sold an impressive 23,355 cars in the first half of 2025, compared with Zeekr’s 450.

Cut to August 2026, and Zeekr has already managed to sell 10,070 cars so far this year – a whopping 9172 of those the 7X.

Ben Adams, a business owner from Bronte, New South Wales, bought his 7X last year entirely by accident.

“I was doom-scrolling one night because my kid is a terrible sleeper. I saw an ad for Zeekr, had never heard of it but thought it looked cool,” Adams recalls.

“It was a refundable deposit and there was a three-month waitlist, so I figured why not, I’ll put my name down. A month or two later, my partner said ‘you should cancel that deposit’, so I called them but it was too late – the dealership said ‘Your car is already here, we’re looking at it’.”

Six months later, Adams says it’s been “the happiest mistake ever”.

“It’s been such an upgrade – we drive everywhere now. My son loves it, and it’s so comfortable.”

However, transitioning to a brand-new electric car has been a bit of a learning curve.

“The only time we ever had an issue, I was walking with a cranky baby and loads of shopping and I got a new notification on my phone to say ‘there’s a new over-the-air update do you want to install it?’ I hit ‘yes’ and the car shut down, I couldn’t even open the doors, so I was stuck there for half an hour!”

The dealership experience also left a bit to be desired, with Adams joking that it reminded him of “a mad start-up”.

“They were all over the shop, we were in there for hours to pick it up, and they sold us an electric car without a charging cable in it – they said that was in the next shipment because of the war!” he recalls.

For a brand still finding its feet, achieving overnight success has not been without its challenges.

By its own admission, Zeekr has struggled to keep up with the astronomical demand for the 7X, battling stock shortages and a fledgling dealer network that is not yet up to the task of deliveries.

“We are only limited at the moment to physically being able to deliver cars in a month,” Zeekr Australia head of digital Andrew Stamatakis told Drive in April.

“We’re working on bringing more dealer partners on board. By the end of this year, we’re going to have 25 dealers, and we’re looking to make sure [they’re] in the right areas.”

The cars themselves have also not been without their technical gremlins.

Perth-based owner Justin Clark says he has had to return his car to the dealership five times over an “auto-hold fault” that prevents the car from shifting into drive.

“If you leave it for 20 minutes and lock it and unlock it, it’s fine, but if you’re in the middle of nowhere or out late at night, that’s not an ideal solution,” Clark says.

Zeekr is aware of the issue and is investigating a resolution.

Other owners who spoke to Drive said the automatic lane-change feature can be temperamental, the Zeekr app can be glitchy and the software updates can be inconsistent.

Still, Clark says he’d happily buy the car all over again. “We’ve done close to 13,000 kilometres in it … for the money you pay and the equipment you get and the comfort, I can’t really fault it,” he says.

Plenty of similarly passionate owners are taking the troubleshooting into their own hands, with dedicated Facebook groups of more than 30,000 people collectively airing grievances, sharing quick fixes or praising the car’s performance.

The car maker hopes to ride the wave of the 7X’s success by introducing three new models to Australia before the end of 2027: a mid-size electric wagon called the 7GT, a large plug-in hybrid SUV called the 8X, and an “upper large” plug-in hybrid SUV called the 9X.

Zeekr says wait times for most 7X variants are also now down to three months, with the brand on track to hit its target of 25 dealers across the country by the end of the year – and expansion in regional New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland on the cards.

For owners like Adams, the appeal of the Zeekr 7X comes down to how it makes them feel.

“My car feels like a grown-up car,” he explains.

Of course, the shift to electrified motoring has also been a boon at a time of global fuel-price fluctuations. Laughs Adams: “I’ve been as smug as a cat with the cream!”

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