Volkswagen ID.7 review

We'll keep this short and sweet: the ID.7 Pro Match is £51,550, or £55,450 for the bigger-battery Pro S. In both cases add £690 for the Tourer body.

For context, both the BMW i4 and Hyundai Ioniq 6 are cheaper. Remarkably you can pick up a refreshed Model 3 in rear-wheel drive form for just under £40k. And it's quicker. But it doesn't go as far in Standard Range form. The Long Range Tesla is another five grand.

At the time of review, VW was giving away a huge deposit contribution, £6,790, making the ID.7 saloon a lot cheaper per month on a three-year PCP – £345 a month with an £11,600 customer deposit, versus £413/mo with the same deposit and term for the Tesla. And the ID.7 is a decent chunk bigger than the Model 3, if slower-accelerating.

You get a whole bunch of kit as standard. Heated electric massage seats, the augmented reality HUD, 19-inch wheels, a heated steering wheel, Travel Assist, Park Assist, LED matrix lights and two-tone metallic paint all come with the base spec.

The only notable absentee is a heat pump, an option at £1,020. An optional pack adds the glass electro-roof and adaptive dampers, for £4,370. Bigger wheels, Harman Kardon hi-fi and cooled seats, plus heated rear seats, come as an Interior Pack Plus for £2,000.

Car warranty is three years/60k miles, and battery warranty is eight years/100k miles to 70 percent capacity.

Is it efficient?

We’ve been reasonably impressed with the efficiency of VW’s other ID models so far, and in a mixed drive in the ID.7 Pro 77kWh with most of the climate functions active, we saw an average of 3.6mi/kWh. That indicates real-world range of 277 miles. On a windy, wintry day that dropped to 3.4mi/kWh (262 miles) even when a significant portion was vigorous B-roads and motorways. You could easily eke out more with a little bit of restraint.

With the Pro S battery that same consumption of 3.6m/kWh takes you well clear of 300 miles, and with any sort of restraint at all you'll be at 350.

The 77kWh battery claims a 10-80 per cent charge in less than half an hour. That tallies with our experience across a number of cars with this battery, provided you're at a 175kW charger. A 150kW unit would add only a few minutes. For the bigger battery, a peak or 200kW is possible. So on a charger that can deliver that, you get 10-80 in 26 minutes with pre-conditioning (automatically activated if you have the navigation set, otherwise manually via the charge menu).