Right, the next time some social media troll tries the old ‘sure you can’t drive any distance in an electric car’, show them this. 941km surely, in anyone’s book, counts as ‘any distance.’
Normal range of up to 709km
That’s the new one-charge record set by VW engineers using a standard ID.7 saloon. The car was the ID.7 Pro S model, so that means it has the slightly larger 86kWh battery and a 286hp electric motor. Normally, this car would have a WLTP range of up to 709km. Well, clearly, the engineers broke that, didn’t they?
To achieve that distance on one charge, the ID.7 managed to average 9.2kWh/100km (normally VW quotes between 13 and 16kWh/100km for this model) while being driven around and around the famous track at Nardo. Nardo, in the south of Italy, is normally home to more high-speed endeavours - famously, this is where Martin Brundle pushed the original Jaguar XJ220 close to its own name in miles per hour.
Used traffic modelling from TomTom
The 12.5km circuit allowed the VW engineers to run nonstop for 33 hours of driving, using a series of low-speed driving scenarios modelled on the traffic index data supplied by navigation experts at TomTom, corresponding to traffic in Hamburg and Amsterdam. The ID.7 averaged 29km/h during the test. The temperature ranged from 5 to 15 degrees Celsius, so it wasn’t overly warm either.
VW claims that the ID.7 used in the test was unmodified from standard and was simply plucked from the production line in Emden and shipped to Nardo. The claim is that the ID.7’s sleek aerodynamics (0.23Cd drag coefficient) and efficient ‘AP550’ 286hp motor did the rest of the work.
Long distance drivers
Martin Sander, a member of the Board of Management responsible for Sales, Marketing, and After Sales at the Volkswagen brand, said: “We are seeing a positive trend in incoming orders in Europe and are currently selling more ID.7 models than Passat. This shows that the ID.7 is a meaningful all-electric addition to the brand’s product portfolio and, in addition to our successful Passat, is also suitable for long-distance drivers and as a company car.”