| Test drove the new Volkswagen ID.7 Pro
I had the pleasure of taking the ID.7 for a 30 minute test drive. I drove the Pro variant, which boasts a range of 600+ km in summer conditions and around 400 km in the Swedish winters. I unfortunately didn't take any pictures, but it was a very impressive vehicle. I'd never driven a car with adaptive cruise control before, but this one worked just as it should. I set the cruise control for 121 km/h on the 120 motorway, and cruised along for a bit till I caught up with a truck which has a 90 km/h speed limit. The car dumped the additional speed so well that I barely even felt the regen braking. The blind-spot detector seemed to work better than with other cars I've seen. It doesn't just light up when a car is close behind, but the lighting up is dependent on the speed of the car approaching from behind. On one occasion, the car behind was barely doing a couple of kilometers per hour more than me, so his rate of closure was really slow, and the light went on when the car was actually nearing my blindspot. On another occasion, there was a car approaching me, doing maybe 165 km/h or more, and the light went on really early, giving me ample notice.
The headsup display is actually very understated; so much so that I didn't even realize that it was present at first, but when I looked down to see what the little bit of what seemed to be reflection was, I saw that it was showing me the battery charge level, my current speed, and also the speed limit information. Very tastefully done.
The quirks
The braking was regen-braking and it seemed to work quite well. Going off the gas felt much like it does in a manual car, with the noticeable regen kicking in. What was less enjoyable was the feedback from the brake pedal itself. The ID.7 has brake-by-wire I think, and doesn't actually give you real feedback about the extent of braking, but a simulated version of it. At one point on the test drive, I exited the 120 km/h motorway and got onto a 90 stretch which then becomes a 70 after a sharp right turn. There was a car ahead and I needed to quickly slow down, and I applied a healthy amount of brakes, and the car slowed, but not at the rate I'd wanted. I then went harder on the pedal and got the desired response, but the feedback was very off. It didn't at all feel like conventional brakes where there's a bit of a dead-zone and then you get progressively stiffer feedback. I observed this twice more. I guess it's something you can get used to, but it sure feels different.
The feeling
The feeling was overall a positive one; the ID.7 is a big car, and the additional weight of the battery is something one feels, even with the additional power. The starts felt solid and adequate, but hardly something I could describe as sporty. I'm unsure if the car had a sport mode; it probably did, but it's something I didn't experience or experiment with.
Other cool features
The camera view shows a really nice bird's eye view of the surroundings when one engages the reverse, or explicitly hits the camera mode. It didn't have the cool side camera activation during turning like on the 2024 Hyundai Tucson though. The ID.7 apparently has both a parking move memory function, that's useful if one regularly parks in the same place often. It can 'memorize' the surroundings and can execute the parking moves on its own, when asked to do so later. It also has a parallel parking assist feature apparently, but I didn't test either the memory function or the parallel parking assist feature during my test drive.
The price
The Pro Version, with summer and winter tire sets and the dealer discounts was offered to me at 678894 SEK (~59L INR). There was a financing option with residual value, which is something that is beween outright ownership and a lease agreement, where one doesn't amortize the full value of the car during the 'loan' period. The terms were a 36 month period where the EMI would be around 5000 SEK (43K INR), with a 160000 SEK downpayment (13.8 L INR). After 36 months, I reserve the right to sell the car, but I'd owe the dealership 366310 SEK (~31.6L INR). If I could sell the car for higher than what I owed the dealership, I get to keep that, but the uncertainty with an EV is that if the car would be valued at below 31.6L INR after 3 years, I'd have to cough up the difference.
The advantages here over traditional leasing are that I don't have to care about rigid limits on how much I'm allowed to drive each year etc, that are critically important in a lease contract. | 
30th April 2023, 08:34
(1)
Thanks