Volkswagen ID7 Review & Prices

The fourth model in Volkswagen’s electric car line-up, the ID7 is a family saloon with a sporty design that should appeal to you if you haven’t succumbed to the SUV fever that has taken hold of buyers in the last decade or so.

As a left-field alternative to the SUV, it’s a bit like sticking with skinny jeans when the on-trend fashionable types have moved on to baggier ones.

First impressions are strong, with the long ID7 (it’s a shade under five metres from bumper to bumper) looking like a modern family car, with a swooping roof that makes it look slick and sporty. 

Inside, there’s plenty of space throughout, with a lot of legroom and headroom – despite the fact that the ID.7 has the lowest roof of any of VW’s electric models. The boot has a 532-litre capacity, increasing to 1,586 litres if you lower the rear seats, so it should be enough for most family uses. 

Helping to make the cabin more airy is an optional full-length glass roof with smart glass, where the layers of glass in the sunroof can be electronically switched between opaque and clear, using a slider in the roof or voice control (which we’ll come to in a minute).

Car manufacturers are very keen on introducing new technologies in their shiny, new zero-emissions vehicles: in this case, Volkswagen’s nifty innovation is an augmented-reality head-up display (HUD), which comes as standard on all ID.7s. This next-generation HUD projects information that is relevant to the journey on to the windscreen, so it’s in the driver’s field of vision and they don’t have to take their eyes off the road, which is much safer than having to look down at a traditional instrument cluster.

The HUD is some pretty clever tech, but it’s also significant because it has a knock-on effect on the layout of the cockpit. The traditional instruments become smaller (because the driver won’t need to look at them as much), while Volkswagen has also given the infotainment system what is supposed to be a more intuitive menu structure on its 15.0-inch touchscreen.

Another way in which the ID7 hints at what will be the norm in future cars is the voice control feature. Voice controls aren’t new, by any means, but systems like the ID7’s are now more like the ones on smartphones, responding to commands or questions that are spoken more naturally. Whether that means it will interrupt the conversations between the driver and front-seat passenger (awkward!) remains to be seen.

As the ID7 is a car with a relatively large footprint on the road, there’s plenty of room under the floor for a battery pack – and the first versions of the model to go on sale will have a 77kWh battery. This bigger-than-average battery means that the ID7 has a range of up to 384 miles, with its 286hp motor enabling a respectable 6.5-second 0-62mph time. A version with an even larger battery will arrive later in 2024 with a range of about 430 miles – enough to drive from London to Edinburgh without stopping (theoretically, although your bladder might have something to say).

The onboard charging system is pretty state of the art, too. You can charge an ID7 on one of those fancy (and expensive) ultra-rapid chargers at the motorway services, taking enough electricity in 10 minutes to cover 126 miles: you can also charge a battery at 10% up to 80% in 28 minutes.

We’ll have an in-depth review once our expert road testers have spent more time with the car, so check back for their verdict. For now, take a look at used examples of some of the other Volkswagen ID models, such as the ID4 and ID5. Want to sell your car? Well, Carwow can help with that, too.