Cloud-Native Architecture Evolution and Practices at ZEEK Automotive

ZEEK, a high‑end electric vehicle brand under Geely, launched its flagship model ZEEK 001 in 2021 and quickly amassed over 70,000 deliveries, prompting the need for a robust digital ecosystem supported by the ZEEK APP.

The APP integrates community, travel subscriptions, a marketplace, and lifecycle management, creating a seamless user journey from discovery to after‑sales support.

To sustain rapid growth, ZEEK embraced a cloud‑native strategy, focusing on two principles: fully adopting open‑source standards to avoid vendor lock‑in and leveraging cloud services for non‑functional requirements such as stability and elasticity.

Following these principles, ZEEK migrated its backend from virtual machines to Kubernetes, selecting Alibaba Cloud Container Service (ACK) for its extensive integration capabilities. The migration enabled a 20% improvement in resource utilization and a 50% boost in operational efficiency, with all major systems now running on Kubernetes.

For micro‑service unification, ZEEK standardized on Spring Cloud Alibaba, consolidating disparate technology stacks into a single framework, which dramatically increased development speed and reduced inter‑service complexity.

Key challenges addressed include ensuring 24/7 service continuity, accelerating feature release cycles, and improving overall system reliability. Solutions involved implementing MSE cloud‑native gateways with built‑in WAF, adopting full‑link gray release for zero‑downtime deployments, and employing horizontal sharding with PolarDB‑X for database scalability.

Additional initiatives covered automated testing across isolated environments, online service testing powered by Function Compute, and comprehensive full‑link performance testing to validate capacity and guide capacity planning.

Looking forward, ZEEK plans to deepen its cloud‑native adoption, further enhancing system availability and user experience as the automotive business continues to scale.