The 2025 Volkswagen ID.7 encourages car shoppers to reconsider the car versus the crossover—as well as the gas-powered versus the electric.
The latest and longest offering in VW’s growing ID family of electric vehicles honors the classic touring car and modernizes it for the electric age. Standard with a head-up display, available with excellent massaging seats, and styled like an Audi fastback, the ID.7 also points Volkswagen into the premium segment.
After driving it through the hills of southern France beyond Marseille, the only remaining question about VW’s intent for the ID.7 is how much of it will migrate over to the North American market. The 2025 ID.7 arrives in the U.S. in the second half of 2024 with either single-motor rear-wheel-drive or with dual-motor all-wheel-drive powertrains, both fed by a 77-kwh usable battery pack (82 kwh gross). VW wouldn’t commit to bringing the larger 85-kwh battery pack offered in Europe to the U.S.
We won’t know pricing or trims until next year, and our driving impressions are limited to the rear-wheel-drive model. We know it will be imported from Germany and not made alongside the related VW ID.4 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, so it won’t qualify for the federal EV tax credit.
Perhaps most importantly, we know that the long hatchback makes for a comfy, quiet, and clean cruising car with lots of cargo space. Its charms, like its design, are understated in the Volkswagen way. A chrome-like garnish accentuates how the roofline arcs into the tail like a fastback, where the hatch offers crossover-like cargo volume instead of a sealed-off trunk. Up front, a lower grille smiles between side air intakes, and a light bar binds the VW badge and runs through the thin LED headlights into a body line to the wrap-around LED taillights.
2025 Volkswagen ID.7
Its understated design, which is typical for VW, might not turn heads, but its efficiency should turn on brains. The design elements create a low 0.23 coefficient of drag, same as the Tesla Model 3 even though it’s sized more like the Tesla Model S. Consider it an Arteon for the electric age, but measuring four inches longer at 195.3 inches long and with a 5.1-inch longer wheelbase of 117.0 inches. Volkswagen says it's the lowest slung model in its growing ID family of electric vehicles, but at 60.5 inches, it’s nearly four inches taller than the Arteon thanks in part to the flat battery pack that takes up vertical space in the floor.
How does the 2025 VW ID.7 drive?
A new motor and drive unit evolves from the system used in the ID.4. More windings and stronger magnets make it more potent with a rating of 210 kw and an output of 282 hp and 429 lb-ft of torque, up from 201 hp and 229 lb-ft in the ID.4. It makes the ID.7 more spirited than the ID.4, but it doesn’t leap off the line like other torque-rich EVs. The permanent magnet motor takes the ID.7 from 0-62 mph in 6.5 seconds.
All that torque requires a reduction gear, and the drive unit has a new inverter as well as both air and water cooling to improve efficiencies and reduce frictional losses. There’s plenty of punch once moving, and passing trailers or other slow moving traffic uphill is easy up until about 80 mph. The ID.7 tops out at 112 mph, which might affect Germans on the Autobahn more than North Americans.
Four drive modes—Eco, Comfort, Sport, and Individual—offer slight modulations that are more subtle than pronounced. Sport mode quickens the accelerator response (while Eco turns it to mush), tightens the steering, and firms up the available adaptive dampers, while the Individual mode offers more granularity in the touchscreen between Comfort and Sport settings.
source: https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1141414_2025-volkswagen-id-7-test-drive-review
by Robert Duffer
http://www.boscheuropean.com
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