Zeekr X vs Hyundai Nexo

What's the difference?

Zeekr is making waves in Australia at the moment but it's not because of the car you see before you.

Nope, it’s the 7X mid-size SUV that’s captured a heap of attention and a whole lot of sales. In fact, of the 1832 sales the brand has managed over the first three months of 2026, just 54 were for the X.

But that was the old X and this is the new one. With more power, more performance, faster charging and a whole heap of pretty special equipment, especially for the small SUV segment.

So, is that enough to finally put the X on the map?

The first time I drove the Hyundai Nexo it was in a place called Goyang in South Korea.

Goyang was a place of pure contrast. The old Korea clashed with the new as you walked through ancient seafood markets toward the towering Hyundai Motorstudio, an ultra-modernist expression of design, perched like a steel battleship above a simultaneously crumbling and rapidly modernising city. 

Part museum, part design expo, part car dealership of the future, it was as though the whole place was a metaphor for the breakneck pace at which megacorp Chaebols like Hyundai were advancing Korea at a faster rate than its populace could keep up with.

The brand’s Nexo SUV is the same in a lot of ways. It’s a mid-size SUV that might be popular right now, but it contains the technology of the future wrapped in a digestible format for the masses.

Of course, it’s the future from a certain point of view. VW would argue EVs alone are set to drive our brave zero emissions future, but Hyundai is of a different mind.

What you’re looking at here, or so Hyundai’s representatives tell us, is the ultimate replacement for diesel. Long range, high load capacity, and an ultra-fast refuelling time are part of the hydrogen fuel cell promise. One that promises to out-do many of Australia’s qualms with EVs.

A statement of the future it may be, but what’s the Hyundai Nexo actually like as a car? We went to its Australian launch to find out