BMW i7 Review 2024

BMW i7 At A Glance

5/5
Honest John Overall Rating
The BMW i7 is probably the most impressive saloon car we've even driven - and that includes Bentleys and Rolls-Royces. Its electric powertrain adds to the luxury, with incredible refinement and punchy performance. We like it a lot.

+Luxury car with impressive technology and huge amount of wow factor. Real-world range of more than 300 miles. Drives like a BMW should.

-Not as practical as hatchback (or estate) alternatives. It's massive and feels it. £100k start price soon inflates when you start selecting options.

The BMW i7 is the brand's flagship electric car. Essentially an electric BMW 7 Series, it takes a money-no-object approach to luxury and succeeds in being both better to drive - and more enjoyable to be driven in - than its main competitor, the Mercedes EQS.

Unlike a Porsche Taycan (or Audi e-tron GT), the BMW i7 is a car that's intended to appeal to the chauffeur market. That's why it's available with fancy reclining rear seats, not to mention an incredible widescreen television screen that drops down from the ceiling.

Other technological highlights include a Sky Lounge panoramic sunroof, which is part sunroof, part impressive light show - using LED lights embedded into the glass. It's one of the many things that contributes to the BMW i7's concept car vibe.

Don't wish to open the doors yourself? Press a button on the outside of the door and they'll open electronically themselves - admittedly this is a bit gimmicky, and we found them to be more irritating than useful most of the time.

It's a very big car, the BMW i7, which is important if you want rear-seat passengers to be able to stretch out and feel like they're in a luxury airliner. But that doesn't come at the expense of performance.

There are three models available: the BMW i7 eDrive50, xDrive60 and the range-topping BMW i7 M70 xDrive. It's the BMW xDrive60 that we've driven and it's even more impressive than the figures make out: it'll accelerate to 62mph in just 4.7 seconds, while its huge 101.7kWh battery pack provides a real-world range of more than 300 miles.

Should you buy a BMW i7? Most people will find that the upcoming (slightly smaller) BMW i5 will be more than adequate for their needs. But as an outlandish flagship model, the BMW i7 is a really impressive luxury car.