Rent Zeekr 001 2024 in Dubai

We ask one question before we hand over a Zeekr 001 in Dubai, and it has nothing to do with charging. We ask where you plan to park it. The car is 4,955 mm long, which puts it in Mercedes E-Class estate territory, and plenty of older Marina and JLT basement bays were never drawn for that. We deliver to your building in one to two hours, so you can watch it go into your bay before you commit to a week. Past the tape measure, this is a 100 kWh electric shooting brake almost nobody has sat in, and the real decision is whether an unfamiliar badge is worth taking over a Tesla at similar money.

The size problem, and when it stops being one

Start with what the 001 actually is, because the listing calls it a hatchback and that undersells it. It's a low, long five-door estate on a 2,999 mm wheelbase, closer to a Porsche Panamera Sport Turismo in shape than to anything you'd call a hatch. That length is the single thing most likely to annoy you, and it annoys you in exactly two places: tight older basements, and the ramp turns in multi-storey car parks that were designed around a Corolla.

Newer stock in Downtown, Business Bay and the airport car parks swallows it without complaint, and the 360-degree camera does most of the work. Still, if your week involves valet at three different older buildings, take something shorter and spare yourself the reversing.

What you get in exchange is the boot. There's 539 litres behind the rear seats under a long, flat load floor, and another 43 litres under the bonnet that swallows the charging cables so they aren't rolling around your luggage. Two large cases and a couple of soft bags for a DXB run go in without any packing strategy. The tailgate opening is wide and low, which matters more than the litre count when you're loading a pram or golf clubs.

On Sheikh Zayed Road

This is where the 001 justifies itself. Zeekr sells it here as a single motor rear-drive car with 272 hp and as a dual motor all-wheel-drive car with 544 hp, and the gap between them is enormous, so ask us which one is coming before you build your week around a 3.8-second launch. The slower version still does 0 to 100 in 7.2 seconds, which is plenty for merging onto the E11.

Both versions share what actually matters on a Dubai highway: a low, heavy battery floor and a long wheelbase, which makes the car sit dead flat at 120 and stay flat through the long sweepers on the way out to Abu Dhabi. Wind and tyre noise are well suppressed. After an hour behind the wheel you notice how little you've had to correct the steering, and that's the difference between arriving tired and arriving fine.

Around town it's calm rather than sharp. The steering is light, the ride is soft over expansion joints, and the regenerative braking is smooth enough that one-pedal driving becomes a habit inside a day.

Spec at a glance

Range and charging through a Dubai summer

The 100 kWh battery is the same in every version sold here, and the WLTP figures sit at 620 km rear-drive and 580 km with two motors. Treat those as lab numbers. Run the AC hard in July, do some highway speed, and plan on roughly 420 to 480 km of real driving between charges. That's still three or four days of normal city running, and it comfortably clears the 300 km a day included in the rate.

One thing worth being straight about: the export car we rent uses the 400-volt architecture, not the 800-volt system Zeekr fitted to the Chinese-market update. Peak DC charging is 200 kW, which takes you from 10 to 80 percent in roughly half an hour on a decent fast charger. That is quick, but it is not the headline-grabbing seven-minute figure you may have read about. DEWA's chargers are spread across malls, hotels and residential basements, and if you can plug in overnight where you're staying you will barely think about charging at all.

Cabin cooling, and the costs that fall to you

Park anything in a Dubai August and it becomes an oven. The 001 has strong front vents and proper rear outlets, and because it's electric you can start the climate control from the app before you walk out. Do that and you get in at a sensible temperature instead of waiting three minutes on the aircon. The panoramic glass roof soaks up heat when parked, so the pre-cool habit earns its keep faster here than in a metal-roofed car. Running the AC flat out costs you range, which is true of every EV and not a fault of this one.

Salik tolls are billed to your booking as you pass the gantries, and any RTA fines during the rental come to you. With 544 hp on tap in the dual motor car, that second point deserves more attention than usual. Seat belts are required in every seat, and a child seat is the law for under-fours, which we'll fit on request.

Zeekr, or the badge you already know

Rent the 001 if you want a quiet, fast, genuinely comfortable long-distance car with an estate boot, and you can charge where you're staying. It's the better car than a Model 3 on ride comfort, cabin materials and luggage space, and it's a more interesting week. Take the Tesla instead if you want the certainty of the Supercharger network, or if you'll be parking in older buildings every day, because five metres in a tight basement gets old fast. And if your week is mostly short city hops with three or four passengers and no charging at home, an electric estate this big is the wrong tool. For a couple or a small family mixing highway runs, airport pickups and a few long days out, though, this is the most car we hand over for the money.