BMW M Models vs Zeekr 7X

What's the difference?

Long live the mighty wagon. The BMW M3 Touring is treat to look at, and an even bigger treat to drive.

If you want one, act fast. We waited a long time for a wagon-shaped M3, and with electrification increasing in the automotive industry, this will likely be your last chance.

The Zeekr 7X looks better in the metal, impresses with its European cabin ambiance and slick build quality from behind the wheel, and dazzles with its impressive specifications and wild software.

There’s unfortunately a lot riding on local calibration, all the way from ride and handling to driver assist tech. We’ve driven cars from new brands which initially look impressive, but end up being infuriating to live with, and it will only take local testing in the second half of 2025 to figure out whether Zeekr can manage to bypass some of the teething issues its rivals have faced.

It’s also a shame some combination of ADRs and the relatively small size of our market will kill off some of the coolest features this car gets overseas.

Regardless, there’s an impressive product here at least on our limited initial impressions, one which leans on its blended DNA to seemingly provide the best of both worlds - Chinese forward-facing tech, with European platform design. If this sounds like it could call out to you the Zeekr 7X is certainly a launch in 2025 worth keeping an eye on.

It looks spectacular, this M3 Touring, and even more so given a) wagons are so rare, and b) proper low-riding performance wagons with massive alloys are even rarer.

That said, I expect it will be polarising – and possibly too shouty for some – but I've got to say, I like it.

I’ve seen it described elsewhere as a bit of a sleeper, but for mine, you’d need painted-on eyes to not see there’s plenty going on with the Touring, especially one finished in the same Frozen Black paint as our test car.

It is at once sleek and swept back, and bulging and aggressive, especially at the flared wheel arches and fat exhausts poking from its diffuser-filled rump.

Inside, it’s mostly business as BMW usual, though with more carbon-fibre elements — our vehicle was equipped with the M Carbon Experience pack — but snug-fitting seats aside, it’s a premium, if performance-focused, place to spend time.

At a distance the 7X looks, I suppose, like just another Chinese electric SUV. The sleek amorphous body shape is so synonymous with new electric vehicles, they may as well be designed by AI.

A closer inspection reveals a more subtle car, with a hint of aggression about its alloys and sturdy wheel arches. Its stance on the road is certainly more ‘European performance SUV’ than ‘generic family mid-sizer’, especially in the high-spec versions we had a chance to sample.

While I do think it will miss out on a bit of personality in its face without the clever pixel LED light bar it gets in the Chinese market, the rear three quarter might be its better angle, with 3D-style light fittings sliced out of the bodywork, blending with the bootlid spoiler and little flick of the panelwork down below to make for a hint of the sporty capabilities which lie below.

The inside is even better, though. Frameless doors give way to a space packed with lavish trims complete with an immediate and surprising feel of quality. You could be sitting in an upmarket Volvo or Polestar easily, you’re just confronted with an unknown logo on the steering wheel.

It also takes on more personality on the inside, with clever 3D-look ambient lighting inlays, ultra-sharp screens with dazzlingly fast software, and switchgear which feels as premium as any luxury brand.

The giant and completely dominating central touchscreen might not be for everyone, but it’s part of Zeekr’s mission to bring the overbearing sense of tech from the Chinese market to the luxury space.

It strikes me, sitting in the 7X, the days of Chinese cars being cheap and cheerful are laregely behind us. There aren’t even remote reminders, as you might still find from time to time in a GWM or MG product.

There aren’t cheap plastic panels where there shouldn’t be, there aren’t areas where it feels like the design doesn’t quite match up, there aren’t odd bits of switchgear which don’t feel as quality as they should, or mismatching fonts, or software which doesn’t match the rest of the car. 

It’s this attention to detail which makes a car feel more than the sum of its parts, and it’s clear Zeekr’s Gothenburg design studio hasn’t been limited in its scope in bringing a sense of completionism to every part of the cabin.

A performance-focused wagon is still a wagon, right? And that means there is oodles of space in the boot, though the seating choices in our test cars made the front seats less comfortable than they could, and should, be.

But first, the boot. The M3 Touring is a 4.8m-long wagon, which pays dividends when it comes to cargo. BMW says you'll find a minimum 500L of storage space, which grows to 1510L with the rear seat folded.

In the back, you’ll find seating for three, with the requisite ISOFIX attachment points, and with enough head and leg room to get comfortable.

But those carbon front seats are an option I wouldn’t be springing for. They arrive carved out of the rock-hard material, though with big holes throughout to reduce their overall weight, and they’re not only challenging to climb in and out of, but they’re awkward and hard to sit behind.

Stick with the regular seats and both rows will be happier.

The 7X’s dedicated electric SEA platform (a derivative of the same platform which underpins the Polestar 4) allows for familiar EV innovations like a flat floor and better integration for the battery pack. As a result, this feels like a quite, spacious mid-sizer.

Up front there seems to be great adjustability and a nice width to the cabin, and a nice sense of coziness provided by the plush trims and raised centre console.

A tilt-opening centre console box provides a large storage area below (which can be converted optionally to a fridge) while there’s decent storage in the doors, and a large cutaway under the centre console area.

Atop, there’s dual wireless chargers and dual cupholders with a sliding cover piece to keep things tidy when they’re not in use. Overseas versions at least also have nifty lift-open armrests with small storage areas good for sunglasses and the like.

While the screen is massive and is required to control many of the car’s functions, it’s not clear year exactly how deep the functionality of this software in Australian cars will be, suffice to say it will be more streamlined than the complex suite available in China at launch.

However, there are a set of four shortcut buttons plus a volume dial below the screen to add some physical functionality, which is always welcome.

There are also various customisable elements to the digital instrument cluster, setting it apart from the more basic versions out there on some rival vehicles.

Suffice it to say it will be easier to use for non-screen people than the Model Y, the incoming version of which will no doubt dump nearly all physical controls.

The second row immediately stands out thanks to its ease-of-access. The doors intentionally open a full 90 degrees, and you’re greeted with the open flat floor, making it easy to shuffle the whole way across if you’re only able to board or exit on the kerbside.

Space seemed more than sufficient for me (at 182cm) in the rear row, with airspace for my knees and plenty of headroom. The rear seats also offer power adjust and heating in overseas models.

We’ll miss out on the built-in mechanised tray and high quality entertainment screen option which was in the Chinese versions we tested.

In a clever touch, there are even a set of drawers under the rear seats for additional storage, to add to the standard bottle holders in the doors and drop-down armrest.

There’s tri-zone climate with touch panel controls on the back of the centre console, as well as some USB-C outlets for rear passengers. Adjustable air vents are located in the B-pillars.

The boot measures in at 539-litres which is decent, but perhaps not segment leading. It’s offered with quick release seats and a partitionable boot floor as well as a ski port.

Up front there’s a frunk, great for your charging cables, which measures either 66 litres in RWD versions or 42 litres in AWD versions.

Towing capacity according to European-spec vehicles measures in at 2000kg braked, although keep in mind it’s likely to be different for locally delivered vehicles as it will be measured when the car is complied with local suspension settings and to specific ADRs.

Put simply, we don’t yet know how much the Zeekr 7X will cost. In fact, Zeekr in Australia probably hasn’t even decided how much it will cost yet. For a clue, though, pricing was just revealed in Europe, the 7X’s first export market.

There, it starts from roughly $75,000 for a base rear-wheel drive version, although it’s worth noting Geely group vehicles attract a 18.8 per cent tariff in Europe, and therefore we’d expect it to be quite a bit cheaper in Australia.

However, it will also need to steer clear of its much smaller Zeekr X sibling, which comes in two variants priced at $56,900 and $64,900, respectively. Based on these two factors I think it’s fair to speculate a range of $65,000 to $80,000 depending on variant.

On the topic of variants, expect three as the brand will look to mirror its range in China (as it has already done in Europe).

Kicking off proceedings is a standard range RWD with a 75kWh battery pack good for a 480km driving range on the WLTP cycle.

Then there’s a Long Range RWD variant with a 100kWh battery pack good for a 615km driving range, and finally there’s a Performance AWD.

For anyone shopping around for an EV, especially in this mid-size segment this will be a very familiar line-up.

It also boasts a solid amount of equipment, although some particularly impressive items available in its Chinese home market won’t be available in Australia thanks to some buzzkill ADRs.

Still, you can expect extensive Nappa leather interior trimmings, not just the seats and wheel, but in the console and across the dash, too, with a full array of electric adjustments for the front seats with heating (EU cars have the option for ventilation and message functions, too).

It immediately leaps out at you on the tech front with a 16-inch 3.5K centre multimedia touchscreen. This unit is ultra-fast (using a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, for those who care) and has clever graphics on the home screen which show the surrounding weather conditions thanks to its always-online suite.

For those sick of cars without instrument clusters, the 7X gets a 13-inch unit for the driver and there’s also an option to add a 36.2-inch head-up display (at least on EU-market cars).

On the outside there are a set of LED headlights and tail-lights, frameless doors and 19-inch alloys.

Stepping up a grade on Euro-spec cars nets some minor items alongside the larger battery, including an auto-dimming rear vision mirror, and a power-adjustable steering wheel, while the top-spec all-wheel drive adds a significant boost to performance, active air suspension, upgraded brakes and perforated leather trim on the inside.

Again, these standard items might not mirror what ends up being available in Australia, but it should give you at least a good indication of what kinds of things to expect.

Some particularly cool things on the Chinese market versions we drove which can’t come to Australia thanks to design rule limitations include the pixel pattern panel on the front of the car (which adds quite a lot of personality to it), as well as a big electrically-folding touchscreen panel and tray table on the back of the driver’s seat perfect for entertaining kids.

Like Europe, it’s also possible we won’t get all the interior options available in China either, like the Ming Dynasty vase-inspired blue and cream interior trim option.

The other thing to note is despite its premium positioning, expect Zeekr to continue to undercut electric mid-size SUV rivals like the Audi Q6 e-tron, BMW iX3 and the Genesis GV70 electrified.

While the brand agreed comparisons to Tesla’s Model Y are “inevitable”, the car doesn’t really feel like a competitor, because its larger and also because it clearly intends to shoot above the mainstream space with its specs and interior feel.

Perhaps the biggest threat to the 7X though will be the surprisingly plush Xpeng G6 (from a crazy low $54,800) which should be arriving in customer hands imminently.

The M3 Touring’s engine might well be one of the best in the business – a hard-charging 3.0-litre twin-turbo-petrol inline six-cylinder engine that produces a sizeable 375kW and 650Nm.

That power is sent to all four wheels via BMW’s 'M xDrive' with Active M Differential, producing a sprint to 100km/h of just 3.6 seconds.

There are two drivetrains on offer with the 7X. The rear-wheel drive cars are equipped with a 310kW/440Nm motor, while the AWD version adds a second motor on the front axle for total outputs of 470kW/710Nm.

It’s a punchy set of outputs compared to most options in this segment, but as we’ve learned with electric cars, it’s all down to how well the car’s traction software and transmission settings communicate this power to the wheels.

Acceleration times look promising. Zero to 100km/h is delivered in six seconds for rear-wheel drive versions, or just 3.8 seconds in the all-wheel drive (0.1 of a second slower than a current Model Y Performance). Max speed on all variants is an electronically-limited 210km/h.

The top-spec Performance AWD also adds the aforementioned larger brakes and air suspension with active dampers to help keep things all tidy.

Officially, you should see a claimed 10.4L/100km on the combined cycle, but as is often the case in cars with engines that tempt you to be aggressive with the accelerator, the reality can be a little different.

We saw more like 16.4L/100km, but in the big bruiser’s defence, we spent a lot of time in city and suburbs, and a lot more time standing on the accelerator.

The M3 Touring is fitted with a 59-litre tank, and will only accept 98RON premium fuel.

Range is close to 570km using the official consumption figure and around 360km using our real-world number.

Efficiency seems about on par for a car this big and heavy, though it would be nice to see a step-change improvement. RWD versions have a WLTP-rated consumption of 17.8kWh/100km for the base Premium, or slightly less for the Long Range (17.7kWh/100km). The Performance AWD has a relative lust for energy, rated at a less impressive 19.9kWh/100km.

High consumption, of course, requires large batteries. The base Premium RWD gets a 75kWh lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) unit, providing a WLTP-measured 480km of range (about on par for the segment) while the Long Range RWD and Performance AWD versions get a 100kWh nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) pack, providing an impressive 615km or 543km of range, respectively.

Regardless of battery choice, all versions have an 800-volt electrical architecture allowing a claimed 480kW max DC charging speed.

According to the brand this means a 10-80 per cent charge time as low as 13 minutes for the LFP battery or 16 minutes for the NMC battery.

It would make the 7X one of the fastest-charging vehicles in Australia, but keep in mind there aren’t many chargers (if any) currently capable of outputting such speeds.

Impressively, European versions at least can extract the maximum 22kW off an AC charger, allowing a slow-charging time of just 4.5 hours (LFP) or 5.5 hours (NMC).

We’ll have to wait and see whether this specification carries over to the Australian market, but it would be the only car in the class to get 22kW as standard if so. Again, good luck finding public slow chargers capable of outputting such speeds (most are 11kW or less), but it’s nice to have from a future-proofing point of view.

Additionally, the 7X is capable of outputting up to 3.3kW from its charging port in vehicle-to-load mode, which not all rivals offer. Check back next year to make sure this feature is equipped to Australian-delivered cars.

In a word? Delightful.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the easiest car in the world to daily drive. The carbon-fibre seats fitted to ours, for example, made getting in and out a slightly embarrassing challenge, and there’s a surging eagerness to the delivery of power that makes you look a little like you're showing off.

But the adaptive suspension serves up a far more comfortable ride than you might be expecting (more comfortable, in fact, than lesser, cheaper M models), making tootling around town easier and less chiropractic than I was expecting.

But it’s away from the city, with its traffic and red lights, that owning the M3 Touring becomes a delight, from its potent and punchy powertrain to the thrum of its exhaust, and the EV-like immediacy of its power delivery.

This is a driver’s wagon, there’s no doubt about it, with proper seatback-pushing acceleration, direct and confident steering and enough body stiffening and bracing that you really would have no idea you’re driving a wagon when cornering.

Engage its sportiest settings, and disengage its electronic nanny systems, and you can even set to work judging your drifting skills, courtesy of the (as yet untested, honestly) 'M Drift Analyser'.

A family car like few others, then. That you can also take it to Bunnings and throw some sleepers in the back is just a very welcome bonus.

I had a very short test drive of the top-spec AWD Performance 7X on a test course at the brand’s home test circuit at Ningbo, which included a pre-prepared ‘off-road’ feature and about two laps around the car park. So our drive impressions are limited.

Still, the 7X immediately feels the part from behind the wheel. Heavy, purposeful steering communicates the heft of an electric premium SUV well, and the top-spec air suspension handled its weight nicely on a curve course. The big brakes certainly work well and the ride dispatched a set of speed bumps with ease.

The ‘off-road’ section, a steep incline designed to be mounted sideways to showcase the car’s clever torque-vectoring traction system, was also easy to navigate, and the additional clearance provided by setting the active suspension to its off-road setting was notable.

Additionally, the set of surround cameras were some of the better ones I’ve used lately to get a sense of where the important bits of the car actually are when you can’t see yourself.

From what I could tell, though, you can certainly feel the weight of the massive 100kWh battery pack, so don’t expect the 7X to be an ultra agile machine. You can also feel the increase in dimensions compared to a Model Y - this is certainly a larger SUV.

Still, the quality of the cabin and the ambiance inside jumped out at me, as did the sleek software and overall premium feel.

Make sure to check in prior to the local launch of the 7X for more detailed impressions of cars with local calibration settings. It’s likely Australian delivered cars will receive regional damper settings, and as always, the calibration of the driver assist systems will be key.

Even in my brief steer I felt the faint tug of lane keep assist on the wheel, so here’s hoping these features score their own local calibration which isn’t deal-breaking on day one.

I was also able to sample this car’s lower riding sibling, the 007 sedan, on the track. It proved as violently quick as you’d expect with its impressive specifications, although wrangling such power and weight requires a pretty strict electronic stability control (ESC) system. That occasionally sucks the fun out of corners and makes the car feel like it sometimes knows what’s best (and actually, maybe it does).

The brakes also proved to fatigue quickly at track velocities, although the same can be said for most EVs I’ve sampled, aside from the Audi e-tron GT which had impressive sustain.

If you’ve got your eye on this class of vehicle then, it might be worth the wait to compare it to the likes of the techy Audi Q6 e-tron, sedate but predictable BMW iX3, and decidedly more intriguing Polestar 3.

This car gets a set of active (crash avoidance) safety features so comprehensive whether they’re good or not will really come down to calibration.

Like Teslas, the 7X gets so many sensors and cameras it can provide a 3D visualisation in the dash cluster of all the people and objects around the car. It’s one of those new-age features which is undeniably cool and gives you an insight into how the car’s brain works.

The usual array of features otherwise is present including freeway-speed auto emergency braking, lane keep assist, blind-spot monitoring with rear and front cross-traffic alert, as well as door open warning, driver monitoring (with facial recognition, scary), as well as adaptive high beams.

It can even automatically park itself. Actually, in China, at least, it can completely drive itself. We were treated to a tech demo of this car’s fully autonomous “level three plus” driving mode on public streets in Hangzhou.

When on, it shows a complete visualisation of its surroundings and the road conditions on the nav screen. It performed reasonably well in immensely complicated surroundings.

It pre-emptively changes lane itself, somehow avoids the plethora of two-wheeled vehicles and rickshaws driving through every busy intersection in a Chinese city, and is completely capable of stopping then driving through sets of lights all on its own.

The only problem is the system taps into and relies on China’s vehicle-to-infrastructure connectivity. This is how it’s so accurate at knowing when to go and when to slow down at intersections. We’re way behind where we’d need to be for such technology to be deployed in Australia.

Plus it’s far from completely being able to drive itself. Occasionally it would merge into a bus stop lane and then have to merge back out, and at one point it managed to miss a freeway on-ramp and needed to circumnavigate the block to get back on.

Still, it’s a more sophisticated take on the tech than the exclusively freeway test I sat in for Tesla’s self-driving software a few years ago.

The Zeekr 7X is yet to be rated by ANCAP or Euro NCAP.

The BMW M3 Touring is covered by a five-year, unlimited kilometre warranty, and servicing is "condition based", in that the vehicle will tell you what maintenance is required, and when.

You can prepay your service costs at the time of purchase for all BMW vehicles, covering the first five years of ownership.

Zeekr currently offers a fairly run-of-the-mill five-year and unlimited kilometre new car warranty and an eight-year/160,000km battery warranty on its X small SUV which has already launched in Australia, terms which we expect will remain the same on its follow-up vehicles.

Additionally, there’s five years of roadside assistance and the X at least offers long service intervals of two years and 40,000km.

On top of this, Zeekr claims its OEM-backed dealer model will allow for better aftermarket support and parts supply compared to importer outfits, and it is adding a raft of features for a premium ownership scheme similar to those offered by Lexus and Audi currently. From launch the X is also offered with a 7.0kW home charger, as an example.

The brand also tells us it is planning to launch with a more basic version of the software suite in this car, but is also planning at least two major software updates a year which will progressively add more of the features available to Chinese consumers as time goes on.