We’ve driven it. Now we can show you what it looks like, inside, and out. Meet the 2025 Volkswagen ID7. It’s a roomy four-door hatchback that debuts a new, more powerful electric motor from Volkswagen, and a new HMI with a bigger touchscreen, better graphics, and more intuitive user experience. The ID7 also boasts VW’s most advanced driver assistance systems, and a standard head-up display that makes a conventional instrument panel a thing of the past.
2025 VW ID7 Range
As mentioned in our prototype drive story, the ID7 is the latest Volkswagen to be built on the company’s versatile MEB electric vehicle platform, and will go on sale in America in 2024 alongside the ID4 SUV and the forthcoming long-wheelbase, three-row ID Buzz to round out a lineup of all-electric vehicles. Two ID7 trim levels—Pro and Pro S—will be available, both rear-drive, single-motor models with the 82kWh (gross) battery pack that gives a claimed range of 382 miles on the European WLTP cycle.
A more powerful dual motor, all-wheel drive ID7, to be called the GTX, will be unveiled in Europe later this year. The Europeans are also getting an ID7 with a larger 91kWh (gross) battery pack that boosts the claimed WLTP range of the single-motor ID7 to 435 miles.
At 195.3 inches long, 73.3 inches wide, and 60.6 inches tall, the ID7 sits between Tesla’s Model S and Model 3 in terms of its overall size, though both American cars have rooflines four to five inches lower. However, the Volkswagen’s 116.8 inch wheelbase is 3.6 inch longer than the Model 3’s, and even bests that of the Model S by three-tenths of an inch. That, and the taller roofline, endows the ID7 with impressive interior room for a car of its size, particularly for rear seat passengers.
2025 VW ID7 Design
Visually, the ID7 hews to design themes established by the ID4, with thin light bars front and rear, a contrasting strip across the top of the greenhouse, and a beltline that slumps at the B-pillar. It doesn’t look as frumpy as the ID4 can look in some color combinations, but it’s nowhere near as striking or cohesive a piece of work as some of the taut and chiseled designs we’ve seen from Volkswagen over the past decade. There’s none of the post-modern fun of the ID Buzz, either. For a car built on a platform that allows designers freedoms they could never enjoy working with an internal combustion powertrain, it’s disappointingly stolid.
For all that, there is function in the form. Volkswagen claims the ID7 has—on the base wheel and tire combination—a drag co-efficient of 0.23, which makes it the most aerodynamic of the German automaker’s electric cars.
On Volkswagen’s numbers, the single motor ID7 has a 14 percent better range (on the European WLTP test) than the single motor ID4 with the same 82kWh (77kWh) battery pack, even though it has 40 percent more power and 87 percent more torque. Part of that is down to the aerodynamics, but part is also down to the fact Volkswagen’s new APP550 e-motor is also more efficient.
2025 VW ID7 Performance
The APP550 is a permanent synchronous magnet motor that spins to 13,000 rpm and develops 282 horsepower and 429 lb-ft of torque. The motor features a rotor with stronger permanent magnets that offer high thermal load capacity, a stator with a larger effective number of windings in combination with maximum wire cross-section, and a new oil and water-cooling system, as well as low-friction components in the one-speed transmission.
The new Volkswagen e-motor, which will also power the long wheelbase, three-row ID Buzz, has been developed to operate most efficiently between 5000 and 11,000 rpm, which means lower energy consumption at freeway cruising speeds, and will deliver its peak power and torque even when the battery is at a low state of charge.
Our brief drive of a camouflaged prototype suggests the ID7 is so far the nicest and most refined of the MEB Volkswagens on the road. It doesn’t have the endearing character of the ID Buzz, but it is quick, quiet and comfortable. It’s a solid middle-of-the-road sedan; an electric Camry for want of a better description.
New e-motor and improved efficiency apart, the big story of the ID7 is inside. There is no conventional instrument panel, the standard head-up display providing the driver with information ranging from vehicle speed and road lane markings to distance and turn arrows for the navigation system. Legally required information such as vehicle warning lights and a digital speed readout are displayed on a small screen in the horizontal element across the dash that also accommodates the air vents.
2025 VW ID7 Interior Features
Instead, the interior is dominated by a new 15 inch touchscreen with a redesigned and highly configurable graphic interface. The top bar of the display has a new direct access button on the left where the user can open the main menu with an overview of all apps with just one click. Next to this is a button which allows direct access to the most important vehicle functions, which can be configured individually by the driver. To the right of these are additional shortcut buttons which can also be configured to the driver’s preferences.
The lower bar shows the air conditioning and seat functions, which means you don’t have to hunt and peck through a menu to change settings. It also has home button that allows the driver to return to the central home screen again at any time.
The center of the screen is highly configurable and can be set up to show the navigation and media displays, as well as content from the HMI system’s other apps, including suggestions from Volkswagen’s new IDA voice assistant system. The system’s standard prompt is “IDA”, though this can be changed if you’re one of those people who likes to give their car a name, and it can not only control elements of the navigation and media systems but also functions such as the standard ambient lighting, driving profile selection, or even questions about the weather.
Volkswagen says the system even understands colloquial language: Say “IDA, show me the stars”, and it will apparently switch the electro-chromatic panoramic sunroof from its sun-blocking translucent mode to its transparent setting.
The ID7 will be available with a host of driver assistance features, the most notable of which is a park assist system with a memory function that, when traveling under 25 mph, scans to the side of the vehicle and will remember any spaces in the last 55 yards in which it can be parallel parked alongside a curb (for parking in bays, as in a shopping mall parking lot, the system works at speeds under 13 mph).
The system will also remember how and where you park the car in your driveway or garage and will automatically take over the maneuvering. You can choose whether to stay in the car or stand outside and watch if you’re no more than 27 yards away.
Also making its debut in the ID7 is a new generation of front seats that offer an optional massage function that includes large air cushions in the seat squad that are designed to activate the pelvis and the spine, and an automatic climate function that uses temperature and moisture sensors in the seats to decide whether to blow heated or cooled air through the seat fabric. The seats will not only keep you cool or keep you warm but using a combination of heated and cooled air will also dry your damp clothing if needed.
2025 VW ID7 Price
No word on pricing, but as the ID7 will be positioned as the halo model of Volkswagen’s EV lineup in the U.S., expect prices for the entry-level Pro, which comes standard with navigation, climate control, the head-up display, and voice activation, to start at just over $50,000. The Pro S, which will get 20 inch alloy wheels as standard, plus the top specification seats and automatic LED lights and more premium trim materials is likely to sticker at about $55,000
Volkswagen has been slow to roll out its electric vehicles in markets outside of Europe—the U.S. does not get the smaller ID3, nor the coupe-like ID5, and there’s no word on whether we’ll get the sharp-looking, Golf-like ID2 small car. But from 2025 the ID7, the ID4 and the three-row ID Buzz will joined by two yet unseen MEB-based electric Volkswagens, one a small crossover about the size of the Taos, and the other mid-sized, three-row SUV.
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