CARS OF THE WORLD

Geely Zeekr 009 2023.

The luxury minivan Zeekr 009 from Geely.

The van will be the second model of the young sub-brand of the Chinese company. On the home market the novelty will be released later this year.

The Zeekr brand appeared in the portfolio of Geely Auto holding in 2021, it was created for expensive electric cars.

The firstborn was a large liftback Zeekr 001 in the Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo format.

By the way, the forerunner of the Chinese «five-door» debuted under another brand — Lynk & Co (joint project of Gili and Volvo).

And the second model is ready to debut: an electric minivan, and there is no «two» in the name, the MPV has an index 009.

The manufacturer has yet published only a couple of teasers, but back in March, local media, among which was the online edition Autohome, ranted spy photos of the interior, and yesterday the same portal posted a picture of the back, stripped of camouflage.

It is officially announced that the basis of electric van is SEA (Sustainable Experience Architecture) open-source platform (that is, Geely plans to sell the «cart» to third-party companies), on which liftback Zeekr 001 is built.

Dimensions of Zeekr 009 have not been disclosed yet. Chinese specialized media report that the length of the model exceeds 5.1 meters and wheelbase is 3.1-3.3 meters (the distance between axles of Zeekr 001 is 3005 mm).

The van received vertical blocks of headlights with LED running lights, instead of radiator grille there is a cork with glowing lines. Rather massive slat combines rear lights.

Inside the cabin there is a minimalistic front panel with two displays, like in the related liftback.

There are almost no physical buttons, though Zeekr 001 has a number of keys under the similar touchscreen of a multimedia system.

The second row has two separate seats with wide armrests, with the sliding seats set close together.

There are no details about the technology yet, except that the van is promised a range of more than 700 km, but this figure is calculated by the outdated NEDC cycle.

The co-platform liftback Zeekr 001 is available today in three versions. Thus, it is possible to choose «five-door» which has one electric motor with 272 hp on a back axis, but such modification has a top battery with capacity of 100 kWh.

Declared cruising range of the 2022 model year limousine is 732 km (already on the local cycle CLTC).

Another version is with two electric motors, that is with a four-wheel drive, total output — 544 hp.

This Zeekr 001 has two variants of battery to choose from — the same 100-kilowatt and 86 kWh battery.

In the first case, the range is 616-650 km, in the second — 536 km (also by the CLTC cycle).