The Zeekr X AWD is sleek, spacious and classy – and includes one outrageously stupid feature

Chinese newcomer Zeekr X has hit the market with a classy, powerful and reasonably priced vehicle. What a shame I’m not writing about that – instead, I’m asking why anybody would want a car which neighs like a horse.

Stephen Corby

4 min read

1:45PMFebruary 19, 2025.

Updated 8:03AMFebruary 20, 2025

The Weekend Australian Magazine

Sleek, spacious and powerful: but what’s that sound?

The award for Stupidest Automotive Feature has been hotly contested over the years (“fragrance diffusers” that made your Mercedes smell like a strip club were my favourite for a pong time) and our Global Overnerdlord Elon Musk no doubt thought he’d snagged it permanently when he stuffed fart noises into his Teslas.

Unfortunately, and inexcusably, however, Chinese newcomer Zeekr (yes, another one – there are now so many car companies from the land of the griping Pooh Bear that you can see them from space) has looked at the global success of Tesla and decided it was the stupid, childish and embarrassing features buyers were into, not the innovative idea that an electric vehicle could be fun to drive.

This is how I’m choosing to guess the engineers decided to offer the Zeekr X with not only a choice of silly light shows it can perform, as you leap out of the car and run away in shame (Musk likes these too), but external speakers through which you can make it sound, to innocent bystanders, like you are torturing cats. Or that you’ve run over a horse (possibly Mr Ed). Or a cyclist.

While I wish I was making this up, because it would be funny, I’m not. Press a button on the Zeekr X’s giant Tesla-type screen and you can choose to pump your awful music into the world, or play a pre-recorded voice announcing that you are grateful for someone letting you in; or you can, with your windows up and presumably a bag over your head, shout things out of those speakers, in a choice of either an artificially deepened voice or one that makes you sound like Hello Kitty.

If those options aren’t stupid enough for your liking, you can press the Cat button and it will, I kid you not, make sounds that suggest you’ve run over a cat (caterwauling cries of chilling reality). Horse, Sports Car and Tractor are other choices, but you can also select a ringing bicycle bell, which, I guess, could improve the relationship between myself and people who think they should ride on the road, because I could use it to politely inform them of my seething presence.

Many of the new Chinese brands have safety systems that are on the panicked side of oversensitive.

I found the driving experience quiet, refined, pleasant even – and with 315kW and 543Nm, powerful.

That feature, and at least a few of the others, would make some sense if you could use them while the vehicle is in motion, which I’m sure you can do in other, more carefree markets, but in Nanny State Australia you can only access these buttons when the car is stopped and in Park mode. Which is a bit like creating a politician who can only speak when there are no voters in earshot. Which would be nice.

Sadly, the Zeekr X also makes lots of other noises while you’re driving, mainly related to safety, which are almost as infuriating. If you’re sitting in two lanes of traffic, both turning right, and your Zeekr X is in the left of those lanes, putting your indicator on tells the car’s brain that you’re going to crash and sets off an alarm. I also had an “Emergency Brake Operation” when someone drove too close to me while I was at a red light. And another occasion when the car made some particularly piercing wails and started braking for me because a vehicle in front was quite close.

This is not, to be fair, a uniquely Zeekr problem. Many of the new Chinese brands have safety systems that are on the panicked side of oversensitive. I have spent a lot of time working out how to turn all these systems off before going anywhere in a Chinese car.

If you don’t mind living with safety systems that make it feel like you’re wearing high-vis at all times, the Zeekr X is probably a fine choice.

It’s also only fair to point out that you don’t ever have to use the Stupid Sounds feature on this Zeekr X, or tell anyone that you bought a car thus fitted. And if you don’t, I’m sure you might quite enjoy the X, which feels suitably spacious, classy and even expensive inside, despite starting at a quite reasonable $56,900 for the single-motor, rear-wheel-drive version.

Being a classy guy with even classier readers, I was given the range-topping, twin-motor all-wheel-drive version ($64,900), which performs like most modern EVs, providing prodigious thrust from any throttle input at almost any speed. Indeed, in what looks like a hefty hatchback, I found the driving experience quiet, refined, pleasant even – and with 315kW and 543Nm, powerful. But I must admit I didn’t talk about this to any of the passengers I took in the Zeekr. Oh no, I was far too busy saying “Look at, and listen to, all the stupid shit this car does – and then please tell me why you think they’ve done this?” No one offered an answer, only open-mouthed gapes of despair. I did have some tremendous fun with it every time I went to pick up my teenage daughter and she walked towards the car, and I frightened a lot of strangers with my horse-noising around, too.

If you can resist touching those buttons, and you don’t mind living with safety systems that make it feel like you’re wearing high-vis at all times, the Zeekr X is probably a fine choice. It’s just not for me.