BMW i7 Review (2022-present)
BMW i7 cars for sale
4.0
Expert review
Pros
Extremely comfortable
One of the most hi-tech cars you can buy
Cheaper to run than petrol or diesel alternatives
Cons
Styling won't be to all tastes
Expensive to buy
A Porsche Taycan is more fun to drive
The CarGurus verdict
The BMW i7 is a truly brilliant luxury car, whether you consider it next to petrol alternatives or in isolation with its closest electric rivals. For interior finish, technical wow-factor and occupant comfort, we rate it more highly than the Mercedes EQS which is itself quite extraordinary on these factors. Sure, the Tesla Model S is usefully cheaper and more efficient, but if you want a limo that’ll make a statement, it’s the Mercedes or BMW that you need to be looking to, and the BMW pips the Mercedes for wow factor – if only just.
However, the BMW is not as efficient as you might hope, and it’s not as practical as these alternatives. If it had a frunk for the cables, and better efficiency to match its arch nemeses from Mercedes, we’d have given it the full five stars. As it is, it’ll have to live with four stars, but by any standard, the BMW i7 has stepped up the luxury vehicle game.
The BMW i7 is the pure electric version of the new BMW 7 Series, which is itself the German brand’s ‘halo’ saloon model. From launch it’s only going to be offered as the long-wheelbase, four-wheel-drive, 536bhp BMW i7 xDrive60. An even more powerful BMW i7 M70 version will join the range in 2023. There are two plug-in hybrid models offered in the 7 Series, both with a 50-mile pure electric range, but we’ll deal with those in a separate review, and focus on the all-electric BMW i7 here.
The BMW i7 xDrive60’s two electric motors are powered by a 101.7kWh lithium-ion battery, which delivers an official WLTP range from 367- to 387-miles depending on wheel size and equipment. Key rivals include the Mercedes EQS which, notably, goes much further with a range of closer to 500 miles, and the Tesla Model S, which also offers more performance and a fractionally longer range. The Porsche Taycan and Audi e-tron GT are also luxury, electric four-door saloons that the BMW i7 must compete with but, in truth, they’re very driver-focussed and are rather disparate from the i7 limousine. Luxury SUVs such as the Mercedes EQS SUV, BMW’s own iX, the Audi e-tron and the new Range Rover are much more similar in nature to the i7 than the Porsche Taycan.
The BMW i7 is only available as a long wheelbase model in the UK, which means that we’re talking about a 5.2-metre saloon. As such, it’s no surprise that you could probably host a live performance of Riverdance in the back seats – although you’re more likely to want to sit back in the reclining, massaging executive seats and watch something on the 31-inch screen. It’s certainly comfortable, even if you don’t add any optional features, and it’s even a touch better for legroom than the Mercedes EQS (even if neither is going to leave passengers wanting).
Space up front is also extremely good, with standard electric seat adjustment offering a great range of adjustment to cater for just about every size and shape. There are also a good number of storage cubbies and a dedicated wireless charging slot for your phone, so it’s easy to keep your stuff secure and out of the way.
However, the BMW i7 is a traditional saloon, and that means that you have a more limited boot opening than on the big hatchback openings of the Mercedes EQS, Tesla Model S, and all of those luxury SUVs as well. Having said that, it’s still a big, 610-litre boot that’s very deep and which will swallow a couple of full-size suitcases, so sheer capacity isn’t a problem even if others offer much bigger boot apertures. There’s no ‘frunk’ or front boot in the BMW i7, either.
The BMW i7 is one of the quietest and most comfortable cars money can buy. Mind you, it should be when you consider its remit is to transport passengers in such lavish, isolated peace that travel time becomes restful or productive rather than generally time-consuming and annoying. As a chauffeur car it’s wonderful, with barely any whine from the electric motors and just a very subtle, background hum of wind- and tyre noise as speed builds.
The steering is light enough to make this an easy car to manoeuvre around posh hotel entrances or awkward car parks, yet there’s also plenty of confidence and control in faster direction changes. For all that, the i7 isn’t a car that you ever feel particularly inclined to drive in a spirited manner, despite it being able to surge up the road from 0-62mph in just 4.7sec.
The standard adaptive air suspension delivers tidy body control and there’s plenty of grip and response to enjoy on a decent road. But, if you really want an i7 that’s also a performance car you’d be well advised to wait for the i7 M70 xDrive that’s arriving in 2023. Otherwise, in this more moderate xDrive60 guise, the i7 is a big car that feels far more focussed on comfort.
Driving an i7 smoothly is easily done, because the brake pedal feel is easy to judge and even the regenerative braking is predictable and easy to modulate. You can toggle between three different levels of recuperative braking in the i7, but you have to do it via the infotainment screen, which is a faff. The adaptive setting is great, though; predictable, easy to modulate and not too intrusive. It even identifies downhill sections and responds to traffic lights, too.
Ride comfort is fantastic. Even significant imperfections in the road barely trouble you in the i7’s luxurious cabin. You will have to look to the true, prestige brands such as Rolls-Royce and Bentley to find a quieter and more comfortable car than this.
The BMW i7 is only offered in two trims – Excellence and M Sport. Excellence is the cheaper of the two but is still fully specced with panoramic glass roof, 19-inch alloy wheels, the illuminated grille, keyless entry with soft-close doors, fully adaptive LED headlights, leather and oak interior trim, electrical seat adjustment with memory function for those in the front, heated seats in the front and back, four-zone climate control and more. There’s even automatic door opening for the first time ever on a 7 Series, meaning that you can use the touchscreen or voice control to open and close the doors.
M Sport mostly adds style extras such as 20-inch alloy wheels and darker, ‘Shadowline’ chrome trim.
Infotainment consists of a 14.9-inch central touchscreen and a 12.3-inch digital driver’s display, which are both set into the single, elegant ‘BMW Curved Display’ that perches atop the dash. The BMW i7 gets the latest Operating System 8, which we saw first in the iX. It comes complete with a rotary controller and shortcut buttons in the style of BMW’s well-known iDrive system, or there’s the touchscreen and voice control. We found the rotary controller best for controlling most features on the system, but the combination of touchscreen and the impressively accurate voice control is also great.
Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and an ‘augmented reality’ native satnav system that shows you a video feed of the road with live arrows overlayed to help show where you’re going at an upcoming junction – not to mention the head-up display – are all standard. Finally, wireless phone charging and a Bowers and Wilkins audio system completes the comprehensive kit list.
That’s not where the tech ends, though. We’ve already mentioned the cinema-style screen in the back, but there’s also the Sky Lounge Panoramic Glass Sunroof. This £850 option brings ambient lighting that’s inlaid into the glass roof in an intricate pattern, which you can then light up in any colour or pulsing light pattern of your choice. You thought the Rolls-Royce starlit roof was impressive? Well, expect this incredible light display to wow you even more.
Other posh options include bigger wheels, and electrically reclining and massaging rear seats with retractable blinds for the windows. You can even have cashmere seats, if you want.
While we’re talking about the exhaustive tech and equipment on the BMW i7, we should talk about safety and autonomous features. The BMW i7 has all the driver aids that you’d expect, and is also now equipped with Level 3 semi-autonomous driving. This is, effectively, a system that combines the standard adaptive cruise control and lane-keep systems, with a multitude of cameras and radars so that the car can now accelerate, brake and steer itself provided you’re on a clearly marked road.
For now, you are legally obliged to be in control of the car at all times, but if or when legislation allows, you will actually be able to take your hands off the BMW’s wheel and leave it to drive itself on dual-carriageways and in appropriate conditions.
Go for the optional Parking Assistant Pro, and the i7 will also park itself and even learn how you like to park in those spots you use a lot, and it’ll tell you if there’s traffic coming when you’re reversing out of a space, or if there’s a cyclist or car coming when you’re opening the door.
Basically, if BMW has the tech to hand, it features on the i7. And BMW has a lot of tech to hand.
The BMW i7 costs a similar amount to its nemesis, the Mercedes EQS, and while nobody would call a £108k starting price cheap, it is competitive given the equipment on board.
Where the BMW does look a little lacking next to the EQS is when it comes to efficiency. Efficiency for electric cars is measured in miles per kWh (m/kWh), so the more miles you get to each kilowatt hour of battery capacity, the better your range and efficiency. The BMW i7 xDrive60 manages up to 387 miles from a 101.7kWh battery, while the Mercedes EQS 450+ manages up to 487 miles under the same WLTP government-regulated test regimes. That works out at some 4.5m/kWh for the Mercedes, but only 3.8m/kWh for the BMW. It’s the EV equivalent of finding out that the BMW does 30mpg while the Mercedes does 45mpg, so ultimately the BMW will cost more to run per mile than the very aerodynamic and efficient Mercedes. The Tesla Model S will also be more efficient, thanks to its slippery shape.
When it comes to real world range, we’d estimate that the BMW will manage between 260 and 360 miles to a single charge depending on the temperature. Colder weather will always cause an electric car’s range to drop, even those (including the i7) that have a more efficient heat pump system to warm the cabin.
The i7 will be cheaper than most petrol or diesel alternatives, though. Assuming a domestic electricity cost of 40p/kWh, the i7 will work out at between 10p and 16p per mile depending on the efficiency you’re seeing. Routinely using cheaper off-peak tariffs at home will save you more than half on those costs, but public charging will push electricity costs up very noticeably. It still promises to be cheaper than your average petrol car doing 40mpg, never mind an equivalent high-powered combustion engine car.
The BMW i7 is too new to have been subject to any owner surveys. Its three-year, unlimited mileage warranty is no better than that offered by most rivals, while the eight-year, 100,000-mile warranty that applies to its lithium-ion drive battery is also matched by most others. As an overall brand, BMW came a middling 16th out of 32 marques included in the 2022 What Car? Reliability Survey, which rates cars up to five years old. The Driver Power Survey 2022 considers new car reliability and overall owner satisfaction, including aspects such as customer service, and it also rated BMW 16th out of the 29 brands included. Suffice to say that BMW appears to be middle-of-the-table for reliability overall, while we’ll have to wait and see when it comes to the i7’s reliability specifically. With a longer history with mainstream electric cars, thanks to its excellent little BMW i3 electric car, BMW does at least have the heritage and the experience that suggests that its electric cars will be well built and durable.
As a zero emissions car, the BMW i7 is exempt from VED road tax. As for battery longevity, modern lithium-ion batteries have proven to be longer lasting than most predicted. Even so, they do lose performance over the years and miles, and it’s reasonable to expect to lose some 10–20% of the car’s potential range after the first 10 years and 100,000 miles. Those cars that are rapid charged regularly will typically lose battery life faster, so try to use slower AC charging where possible, and only charge the battery to 80% in routine use (when you don’t need the full potential range) to maintain the best possible battery life.
- The BMW i7 xDrive60 has a CCS rapid charging, and Type 2 slow charging port located in the rear wing of the car, where you might expect a normal fuel filler to be. These are the European standard socket types, and are compatible with the vast majority of public charging stations and all home car chargers.
- The i7 will rapid charge at up to 195kW. This means that, with a powerful enough charger, you can get a 100 mile top-up in under 10 minutes, or a 10-80% top-up in around 30 minutes. That’s not quite as quick a charge as you’ll get in the Porsche Taycan or Tesla Model S, while the Mercedes EQS manages a peak charging rate of 207kW – close enough as to be negligible compared to the BMW i7, in practice. The i7 will also automatically warm its battery (a modern lithium-ion battery such as the i7’s typically charges fastest and delivers the best possible range when it’s functioning at around 25 degrees) if you put a charger in as your destination on the nav. Annoyingly, this doesn’t work if you’re using a maps app on your phone, so the fact that you can simply tell the i7 to warm its battery a few minutes before you arrive at a charging destination is also a neat trick that not many other electric vehicles offer.
- Plug into your 7kW home wallbox and the BMW i7’s huge battery will charge from empty to full in under 15 hours. It will charge at up to 11kW from a powerful enough AC charge point, but bear in mind that very few domestic properties in the UK can support an 11kW charger, which is why it’s routine for home chargers in the UK to charge at a maximum charging rate of 7.4kW.
- If you want the most luxurious: We’d stick with the slightly cheaper BMW i7 xDrive60 Exclusive, but go for all the options including the Executive Pack, which bundles the executive reclining, heated and cooled massage seats in the back, plus the ‘Theatre Screen’, sunblinds and more, albeit for £10,500. Don’t forget the front massage seats, the upgraded ‘Diamond’ Bowers and Wilkins audio, and the incredible Sky Lounge glass roof. The cashmere seats are seriously lovely, so why not add them as well if you’re going all out and are brave enough to contemplate cleaning them.
- If you want the best chauffeur car: As above, although perhaps skip the cashmere seats.
- If you want the longest range: Stick with Exclusive trim, again, and make sure that you go with 19-inch alloy wheels as it’s the bigger wheels that really eats into the potential maximum range of 387 miles in the BMW i7.
- If you want the sportiest: Go for the BMW i7 xDrive60 M Sport, for its bigger wheels, uprated brakes and sportier looks, or if you can bring yourself to wait until the i7 M70 arrives later in 2023 then that certainly promises to be a more performance-oriented proposition.
- If you want the best business express: Again, go for Exclusive trim but be a bit more restrained with the options. In fact, you don’t need to add anything, but the Technology Plus Pack will be popular for the upgraded sound system and semi-autonomous driver aids, while the Front Comfort Pack for heated and ventilated massage seats is worthwhile if you really want the ultimate luxury, executive transport.
