The Zeekr Mix is ​​much more than a new MPV

The biggest announcement from Chinese brand Zeekr at the Auto China show in Beijing last week looked like a beautifully redesigned take on the utility vehicle. But it was also a sign of the direction not only of Zeekr, but of the car industry in China in general. It shows how far the country’s automakers have come and how much more competition American and European companies will face from now on.

The Mix is ​​of course an electric truck because Zeekr is an electric-only brand. Zeekr hasn’t launched in the US (or the UK) yet, but entered the lucrative European market last year with the 001 shooting brake and X compact car. Since its debut in October 2021, Zeekr has delivered 240,000 vehicles, so it’s not a huge player so far, but it’s also part of the huge automotive giant Geely, which owns many brands only available in China but also Volvo, Lotus, Polestar , LEVC and Malaysian automaker Proton.

What’s so special about Zeekr Mix?

Being electric, the Mix has managed to maximize its interior space, as its motors are small and its batteries under the floor. However, one of the key design innovations of the Mix is ​​the lack of a B-pillar. On both sides, the front door slides forward and the rear door back. This creates a wide opening for entry into both the front and rear seats of the car. In the prototype demo vehicle, there was a table in the middle and the front seats could be rotated, turning the interior of the car into a dining room.

The idea is that this is the perfect format for families on a day out. Now that China is more affluent, its people are looking for better ways to enjoy their free time, so vehicle designs are starting to be geared more towards that rather than being purely utilitarian. At the Auto China show, there were quite a few vehicles on display with bike racks or off-road cars aimed at exploring China’s vast countryside. Design studies of the Mix also showed it as a caravan.

It might be a cause for concern that the Mix doesn’t have a B-pillar, but that’s not entirely true. The edges of the doors are reinforced with integrated pillars, so when the doors are locked into place, they actually form a B-pillar. The design has yet to pass independent safety tests to certify that this system works, because this is not yet a production vehicle (and Zeekr didn’t say when that will be other than “soon”), but it’s a very clever piece of engineering. Zeekr expects a five-star safety rating worldwide when the Mix enters the market.

From MPV to Robotaxi

However, this door innovation is not the most important consequence of the Mix design. The Mix comes as the first example of a new variant of Zeekr’s SEA (Sustainable Experience Architecture) platform called SEA-M. This version is intended for MPVs, logistics vehicles and “robotaxis”, which are autonomous passenger transport. Although Zeekr chose the Mix, a family lifestyle vehicle, to debut on the SEA-M platform, autonomous driving is a clear focus for the company and parent Geely.

At Auto China Beijing, another Geely brand, JiYue, was showing off its self-driving capabilities alongside the launch of a new vehicle called the 07 (Geely cars tend to have numbers rather than names, so the Mix is ​​a bit of an outlier). JiYue is co-owned with Baidu (which has a 35% stake compared to Geely’s 65%), the huge Internet service company that provides China’s most sophisticated and comprehensive street mapping.

At the time of writing, JiYue had a promotion offering its self-driving software, called Point to Point Autopilot (PPA), for free with its vehicles, although once it’s finished it will cost RMB 49,900 ($7,000). This is essentially a Level 3 system, although technically it is not yet licensed at this level due to regulatory restrictions. At Auto China Beijing, I was given a demonstration of its capabilities, which JiYue claims will be available in 200 Chinese cities by the end of 2024. It’s still not truly point-to-point – the driver had to control JiYue 01 demo car away from my hotel and through some side roads to the nearest main road before the PPA was activated. But after that he did a pretty incredible job.

It’s a camera-based system like the Tesla Vision, although the JiYue also uses radar information as a backup. However, unlike Tesla’s Navigate on Autopilot, PPA will automatically change lanes to pass slower vehicles in the current lane, rather than simply suggesting those moves. It can naturally steer and control speed based on the road and cars around it. PPA also automatically enters the correct lane for an intersection and then joins the road for you. It will stop at red lights and then start again when they turn green.

The most incredible feat it performed during my test was entering a freeway from a side street that had no traffic signals. This intersection included cars, scooters and bicycles coming from the left, as well as pedestrians going in both directions. The PPA waited for a safe point to proceed and at no point did it feel that it would endanger vulnerable other road users. You could see them all rendered in 3D on the dashboard, showing that the system had correctly detected them.

The word “robotaxis” was often heard in Auto China – something Elon Musk has also talked about Tesla’s main focus going forward instead of the little “$25,000 Tesla” we’ve come to expect from the company so far. There are already limited trials of this kind of technology in China, such as The AutoX system in Shenzhen. Chinese companies seem far more bullish on the idea than anywhere else in the world.

China’s Autonomous Challenge to Global Automakers

Zeekr also plans to offer similar capabilities to the PPA through its M-Vision software for the Mix. It’s not a huge leap to imagine a Level 4 autonomous blend with passengers sitting across from each other around a table as their vehicle drives itself to their destination. Or business people having a personal meeting while traveling. In fact, Zeekr has partnered with Waymo to create the first dedicated Waymo One vehicle designed to be “rider first”using a design with an uncanny resemblance to Mix.

This is clearly the overall vision of Geely, and many other car brands in China, such as XPeng. Judging from my experience with JiYue’s PPA, they are closer to realizing this goal than the European automakers. Even Tesla’s FSD, while having more city capabilities, won’t be available in as many locations as the PPA until 2025. This should be a wake-up call to the rest of the auto industry. When it comes to autonomous technology, Chinese automakers may just be taking a big leap ahead of the global competition.