Zeekr’s new all-electric 7X SUV sets a bold benchmark for premium EVs in Australia, with world-first battery tech and a 13-minute fast charge.
2 min
Luxury goes electric – at speed. Chinese-Swedish marque Zeekr has officially launched the 7X in Australia, positioning it as the country’s first mid-sized luxury electric SUV tailored for modern families. But this is no ordinary EV.
The Zeekr 7X arrives with the world-first Golden Battery – a breakthrough in ultra-fast charging technology that propels the vehicle from 10 to 80 per cent in just 13 minutes.
Unveiled today at the Australian Museum in Sydney, the Zeekr 7X represents a sophisticated fusion of Scandinavian design, next-gen digital integration and high-performance engineering.
With pricing starting at $57,900 (plus on-road costs), the model offers three variants: a single-motor Rear-Wheel Drive, Long-Range Rear-Wheel Drive, and the flagship dual-motor Performance All-Wheel Drive, which delivers a blistering 0–100km/h in 3.8 seconds.
Designed in Zeekr’s Gothenburg studio, alongside stablemates Volvo, Polestar and Lotus, the 7X is based on Geely’s SEA platform and features a minimalist exterior marked by sleek surfaces, sculpted lines and full-width LED lighting.
Inside, it’s a sanctuary of luxe detailing, advanced technology and serious space. Despite its mid-size status, it offers the roominess of a full-size SUV and 539L of rear boot space, with up to 62L front storage in RWD models.
Cabin luxuries include power-operated doors, ventilated massage seats and premium materials across all touchpoints—particularly on the Performance AWD variant.
As a software-defined vehicle, the 7X is built around digital smarts. It runs Qualcomm’s lightning-fast Snapdragon 8295 chip, making it the most powerful Zeekr yet. The 16-inch HD touchscreen infotainment system is matched by an optional 36.2-inch AR head-up display that overlays navigation and alerts into the driver’s field of view.
Safety technology is comprehensive, with 12 cameras and radar enabling features such as Adaptive Cruise Control, 3D surround-view monitoring, cross-traffic alerts and full automatic park assist.
Over-the-air software updates promise to keep the vehicle’s systems continuously evolving.
With up to 615km of range (WLTP), the Long-Range RWD model is ideal for extended family road trips, while the AWD Performance trim offers serious muscle with 475kW of power and 710Nm of torque. The active air suspension system with 45mm lift capacity ensures off-road capability to match the on-road presence.
Underpinning the Zeekr 7X’s headline charging time is an 800V electrical architecture, future-proofed to handle 450kW DC rates as infrastructure evolves. Even today, using a 360kW charger, drivers can add hundreds of kilometres of range in under a quarter of an hour.
Home charging is just as impressive. A standard 22kW onboard AC charger enables a full charge (10–100%) in 4.5 hours for the standard RWD model.
To celebrate the launch, Zeekr is offering exclusive bonuses to the first 1,000 Australian customers, including:
With more than 520,000 EVs sold globally since its debut in 2021, Zeekr is rapidly becoming a heavyweight in electric mobility. The 7X joins the local lineup ahead of the Zeekr X and Zeekr 009 later this year, signalling the brand’s serious ambitions for the Australian market.
“The Zeekr 7X delivers the kind of intelligent design, long-range confidence, and ultra-fast charging that Australian drivers are looking for,” said Frank Li, Vice President of Zeekr International and Managing Director of Zeekr Australia.
“It’s engineered for modern families but with the refinement and technology you’d expect from a premium EV.”
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Meta is betting on a human-first AI future, but growing legal battles and declining public trust are putting Mark Zuckerberg’s vision to the test.
3 min
“Call us optimists. Call us dreamers. Call us whatever the hell you want, but we’re betting on people, and we like those odds. The future is for everyone.”
That ad copy is from the voice-over of a July Meta Platforms META -3.38%.
spot that’s been part of a public-relations blitz to position Meta as the humanist AI company. The message was undercut by the ad’s inclusion of David Bowie’s “Five Years,” a brooding 1972 song about an impending apocalypse. But this week CEO Mark Zuckerberg left no ambiguity, publishing a 6,500-word manifesto—about 10 times the length of this newsletter—with a title that echoed the ad: “The Future is for Everyone.”
That seems to be Meta’s new tagline. In light of sinking public opinion and the company’s thousands of lawsuits from states, school districts, parents, and users, Meta’s public relations have been defensive. This push represents a return to offense, with a chance to distinguish Meta’s approach to AI from other labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, or SpaceX SPCX +9.65%.
“It is surprising that the discourse from many developing AI is so filled with doom,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I do not understand why anyone who believes that AI will eliminate most jobs and much of humanity’s relevance would rush to build that future.”
Zuckerberg frames what sort of future we build with AI as the central issue of our time. “We believe that delivering superintelligence to everyone is the way to answer this question,” he says. “This has the potential to begin a new era of personal empowerment where individuals can use this powerful new capability to reach their full potential, pursue their interests, and improve their lives and the world more than ever before.”
The flood of words belies the situation on the ground in mid-2026. Americans, at least, have a love-hate affair with social media. A November Pew Research Center poll reported that 71% of U.S. adults used Facebook, and 51% used Instagram. Worldwide, 3.6 billion people use at least one Meta app every day.
But in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in July and August, 61% of respondents said they wanted more government oversight of social media, and two-thirds supported laws to keep children under 16 years old off the platforms. When it comes to Meta in particular, in the 2026 Axios Harris 100, an annual poll about corporate reputation, Meta placed 96th out of 100. It’s only above two other social media companies, Chinese ultracheap retailer Temu, and Spirit Airlines, a defunct air carrier. Regarding ethics, Meta came in last, and it was only ahead of TikTok in trust.
The steady drip of headlines in the teen social media trials isn’t helping. Last week, Meta lost a judgment in New Mexico state court that raised their liability in that relatively small jurisdiction to nearly $1 billion dollars. On Wednesday, jury selection began for a federal case with four states suing Meta over addictive product design, and false marketing that said its platforms were safe for teenagers. In July, Meta claimed that the states are asking for a total of $1.4 trillion in damages, in addition to design changes in the apps. This is part of a multidistrict litigation, where thousands of federal trials with social media defendants are coordinated in Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ district courthouse in Oakland, Calif.
There is a separate such group of thousands of cases in California state court, mostly with individual plaintiffs. The steady drip of bad headlines from the courts will continue unless Meta decides to settle en masse.
Meanwhile, in the second quarter, Meta booked “$2.40 billion of charges related to legal proceedings,” according to its quarterly filing. That may be just the beginning.
Zuckerberg spent 6,500 words getting his utopian message out, but I can sum it up in two: Trust us. The evidence is that Meta has a long way to go to win back that trust.
