Volkswagen’s Most Luxurious EV Just Put Tesla On Notice

Volkswagen’s new ID.7 is seriously efficient. The German automaker took a new 2025 Volkswagen ID.7 for a leisurely drive around Switzerland that just wouldn’t end. The team behind the wheel covered nearly 500 miles on a single charge, spending a total of almost 16 hours behind the wheel of their big sedan.

15 hours and 42 minutes is a long time to spend behind the wheel, no matter what you’re doing. It’s even longer when you’re driving the same 50-mile loop of roads over and over again as you wait for the battery charge to trickle down to nothing. But that’s exactly what Volkswagen Team Switzerland did, trying to show just how far the electric sedan could go before it needed to get plugged in.

16 Hours, 493 Total Miles, One 86 kWh Charge

This wasn’t a specially constructed test track where the eight drivers could go about their hypermiling without worrying about traffic or pesky problems like traffic laws. The route was on actual roads in normal traffic flows. It was even broken up into two days, making sure the driving wasn’t done with empty roads in the overnight hours. VW’s drive loop included highway sections, country roads, and city driving. Since the drive was done around Zug, south of Zurich, it also had plenty of hills for the car to climb and descend.

What might be the most impressive part of this drive is that the car only has an 86 kWh battery pack, so it needed serious efficiency to deliver that range. Accordingly, the ID.7’s onboard computer showed consumption of 6.0 miles per kWh at the end of the 493-mile drive. That’s significantly better than the the model’s official 4.6 mile per kWh WLTP estimate.

The Right ID.7 Could Potentially Stretch That Even Longer

Incredibly, VW says this wasn’t even the most efficient version of the ID.7. It had more options than the standard ID.7 Pro S, including the comfort package, IQ. Drive driver assists, and a heat pump. The WLTP range for this car would have been 435 miles, not the highest possible figure of 441.

Volkswagen compared the numbers to those of a diesel car, and unsurprisingly, the EV fared well in that battle. 6.0 miles per kWh is equivalent to 213 miles per gallon, a figure even Volkswagen’s ultra-small, ultra-efficient, and ultra-slow XL1 diesel hybrid would struggle to reach.

One of the eight drivers was a ringer. Felix Egolf, who is real and not a character created by marketing to sell the E-Golf, has also crushed WLTP range figures in an ID.3 while driving from Germany to Switzerland and in an ID.3 Pro S while crossing 15 Alpine passes.

After your bladder-crushing range run, the ID.7 Pro S can be recharged quickly. 200 kW peak DC speeds get it from 10-80 percent takes around 26 minutes. It can add 152 miles of range in 10 minutes at a quick stop. The car starts from €58,985 in Germany, including sales tax, which is around $65,000. When you don’t need maximum range, it can do 0-60 mph in 6.6 seconds.