• Volkswagen unveils the ID.7 all-electric sedan at CES in Las Vegas.
• The production version will be presented later this year.
• The ID.7 will launch in North America for the 2024 model-year.
• This car will serve as the electric replacement of the Arteon sedan.
All the talk about the electric SUVs coming out in the next year makes it easy to forget that some automakers are also planning to introduce EVs in car form.
Volkswagen today showed for the first time what its future ID.7 sedan will look like. For now, the model hides partially behind camouflage, but it reveals enough to reassure us that the design studies that preceded it - the ID.Vizzion and ID.Aero concepts - have led to an actual production car.
Because yes, the Volkswagen ID.7 is coming to Canada for the 2024 model-year. It is making its public debut this week at the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas.
That camouflage, by the way, is technologically interesting in its own right. Which is only fair given the nature of the CES event. The car is covered with a 40-layer electroluminescent paint.
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The silhouette of the ID.7 is similar to that of the ID.Aero concept and extends to about 195 inches with a very long wheelbase, which should result in a spacious interior layout. In fact, this car could be seen as the electric replacement of the defunct Arteon, a large, roomy sedan.
Unlike the Arteon, however, the ID.7 will have a rear-wheel-drive configuration in its base version (the model shares its underpinnings with the ID.4 and ID.Buzz, among others).
For Volkswagen, this new EV represents its sixth model to fly the ID. flag worldwide. The full specs of the vehicle were not shared in Las Vegas, but the company is talking about a range of 700 km according to the European WLTP test cycle, which should translate into somewhere between 550 and 600 km here. That all remains to be confirmed, of course.
On board, there's something different from other ID. models. The driver data screen is integrated into the dashboard instead of being installed in the usual place, closer to the driver. The centre console is dominated by a 15-inch multimedia screen.
The touch controls for the climate and volume will thankfully be illuminated, unlike those on the ID.4 and GTI, but unfortunately, VW still seems to want to use touch buttons for the climate controls. The company has already expressed a desire to return to buttons for important keys; let's hope that's the case with the production model of this EV
Other interesting innovations include an augmented-reality head-up display system, as well as a climate control system that automatically turns on when it detects users approaching the car.
The ID.7 is expected to make its debut without camouflage in the second quarter of this year.
