You can tell much about a car in just the first few metres of driving it. Yet in the case of the new BMW i7, the electric flagship saloon that sits atop BMW’s range, we’re not actually doing the driving.
Instead, the start of our test route has been preprogrammed so the car can drive itself. The Parking Manoeuvre Assist function can ‘teach’ the car up to 600 metres of road, such as in and out of driveways, so it can do it itself next time. It’s debatable quite how useful that really is, yet it’s impossible not to be impressed as the i7 creeps silently out of the car park, the steering wheel spinning on its own.
As a scene-setter, this gives insight into the i7’s role as not just a flagship model in size and prestige but also in technology, of which it is jam-packed full. The i7 is not a replacement for the BMW 7 Series but a part of the new line-up. All eighth-generation 7 Series models are derived from BMW’s now familiar CLAR architecture, which allows electric and combustion-engined models to be built on the same underpinnings – unlike at rival Mercedes-Benz, where the Mercedes-Benz S-Class and Mercedes-Benz EQS models are entirely different underneath.
The i7 is the launch model for the range, arriving in the UK next month in the xDrive60 form we are testing here. This four-wheel-drive model uses twin electric motors (fifth-generation motors from BMW that are said to use no rare earth materials) with a combined 536bhp. A 102kWh battery is good for an official 367-mile range on the WLTP cycle, and it can be recharged at up to 195kW, at which speed a 10-minute charge will add 106 miles of range.