Volkswagen ID.7 review - Electric motor, drive & performance

Volkswagen says the ID.7’s single electric motor is the most powerful ever used in one of its ID. cars. Despite the car’s heavy weight and large size, its rear-mounted 282bhp motor feels powerful enough, and if you put your foot down it’ll pin you to the back of your seat. Put your foot down from any speed and the ID.7 feels urgent, making it a confident car for overtaking slower traffic. As with most electric cars, the ID.7 delivers power smoothly, with the lack of gears meaning you won't get the intermittent jolts associated with conventionally powered cars as they change.

It’s not as exciting or quick as the more powerful Tesla Model 3 and Polestar 2, even in their respective entry-level guises, but the ID.7 will feel adequately powered for most drivers. Like in those cars, the rear-wheel drive setup of the ID.7 helps make it feel nimble for a model of its size.

One of the ID.7’s notably strong points is how well it handles, and the takeaway from our drive was that its chassis helps disguise its large size and weight well, so it feels just as agile as the smaller Tesla Model 3. The steering is well-weighted and quick to respond, if a little unnatural and lacking in feel. The ID.7 comes with various driving modes, and in Sport, it can feel even more fun to drive – push it to its limit, though, and it can feel a little skittish. The ID.7’s suspension has clearly been set up to cope with the car’s heavy weight. 

Our experience of the ID.7 on UK roads largely reaffirmed it as a refined and comfortable car. The ID.7’s excellent damping means it’s comfortable and yet composed at all times, even in wet weather. There are various drive modes including Comfort, Eco and Individual, with the latter allowing the driver to configure their own settings.

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We’ve now driven the sporty ID.7 GTX, which is the most powerful version on offer. It uses two electric motors which give it four-wheel drive and a total power figure of 335bhp. The first thing to note is that, despite being the hottest version, Volkswagen has refrained from making the ID.7 GTX hard-riding – instead it felt very comfortable thanks to the DCC adaptive damping, which adjusts the suspension in real-time based on the road conditions. Our test car was on particularly larger 21-inch alloy wheels, too, and still managed to ride well, even when we put it into Sport mode.

The GTX handles well on twisty roads, too, although it’s not quite as sporty as a traditional sports saloon like the Audi S4, for example. It felt grippy and capable, though it’s possibly not as engaging as it could be. For real driver fun and involvement, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N with its fake, but thrilling gearbox and augmented engine sounds is a better bet if you can afford it.

The ID.7 has a surprisingly tight turning circle for such a large car, which means it’s easier to manoeuvre than you might expect around town; on a previous test in France, we were taken through some tight back roads in Marseille which it handled surprisingly well.

The brake regeneration settings don’t allow for a great deal of customisation, and can simply be toggled on or off via a stalk on the steering column. When it’s switched on, the regen is quite strong, almost allowing for full one-pedal driving, but it won’t be to all tastes and could do with a greater degree of configuration.

0-62mph and top speed

With its 282bhp single electric motor, the Volkswagen ID.7 Pro and Pro S are capable of a 0-62mph time of 6.5 seconds (6.6 seconds for the Pro S), with a top speed of 112mph. As previously mentioned, this is slower than rivals such as the Tesla Model 3 in base spec, which can do the same sprint in 5.8 seconds, and the Polestar 2, which is 0.1 of a second faster than the ID.7. The all-wheel drive dual-motor ID.7 GTX has 335bhp and does the same sprint from 0-62mph in 5.4 seconds.