BMW 7 Series review

Prices for the i7 xDrive60 that we’ve mostly talked about here start at £115,735, but as ever, be mindful of the options ‘list’. We suspect it wouldn’t take long on the configurator to send that figure soaring towards the £150k mark. Many of the new car’s juiciest features aren’t standard.

If you want to save a bit of cash and release the front wheels from having to do any powertrain work, the eDrive 50 starts at £101,765. Or you can have the hugely powerful M70 xDrive for the not insignificant sum of £165,280.

For the plug-in hybrids, the 750e starts at £105,510 and the M760e is £121,085.

Again, experience with the iX suggests that the i7 should get close to the 3.1-3.3 mi/kWh that BMW claims for it. If it’s anything to go by, this will be an efficient car despite its size and weight. Charge at home on a 7.4kW wallbox and you’ll get 62 miles range in around 2.5 hours. On a 195kW rapid charger, BMW claims it’ll go from 10 to 80 per cent in 34 minutes.

In Europe, a one-off registration to BMW Charging provides access to 305,000 public charging points. The infrastructure is always improving, but BMW says it’s already one of the top charging providers. It also says that ‘green energy’ used in the i7’s battery cell production and use of secondary raw materials cuts CO2 emissions by around 20 per cent. There’s no cobalt from the Congo in the battery, but having invested in a local project there to improve conditions for mine workers, it may revisit that decision.

The i7 also hastens what we might call the new ownership model. BMW Group has a computing centre – somewhere in Munich we think – that oversees the cars’ assistance functions and over-the-air updates. Software algorithms analyse data and create ‘environment models’, as well as visualisation and control functions. The i7 has the latest eight-megapixel cameras that reduces the number of front cameras on the car while doubling the number of measurement points. If you ever watched the BBC paranoid thriller The Capture, this isn’t the car for you. No high-end new car will be, whether it’s electric or not, because we’re through the looking glass now. They are always watching. BMW even has something called the Drive Recorder that can capture footage from around the car, including the 30 seconds before and after a collision. If this all bothers you, we’ll direct you to a pre-loved 1998 E38 740i. That’s probably the best-looking 7 Series of the lot.