Paul Horrell
VOLKSWAGEN ID.7
For now the ID.7 is a hatchback, and a very useful one. Better still, it can be had as an estate. Just not yet. The design is recognisably part of the ID.3/4/5 family, which will sadly leave it marooned in a few years’ time. The company’s designers have lately said that the next wave of Volkswagen electric cars will, to paraphrase, look like Volkswagens not like electric cars. Maybe at that point they’ll give it a sensible name like, I dunno, Passat, and let us drop that annoying full stop.
Anyway, the body shape has an aim beyond your aesthetic sensibilities. Low drag is critical if it’s to take advantage of being a low and fast-tailed hatch. The coefficient is shaved down to an impressive 0.23Cd, and Cd x A – total drag – is even more impressive. Which helps it reach 383 miles on 77kWh. Even in WLTP the ID.7 goes 15 per cent further than an ID.4 with the same pack, and WLTP doesn’t include much high speed driving which would widen that gap further because aero is vital on motorways.
Actually there’s something else – the ID.7 has VW’s newest generation of motor and inverter, which doesn’t improve the bhp, just the efficiency. Still, you’d think 286bhp should make it pretty lively, but this is nearly 2,200kg of large saloon. Performance is, like the outline, substantial rather than spiky. It grazes 5m long. Those wheels are 19s but there’s so much coachwork they don’t look it. Indoors, there’s all the front room you need, and in the back leagues of leg space and enough head clearance.
It’s no hardship to hustle along mind. It controls its body and steers well enough, with a subtl
