‘The roof is on fire!” Thomas Schäfer, the boss of Volkswagen, told a meeting of his managers last year, as he complained of the difficulties in trying to transform the company into a leading electric carmaker against strong competition from Chinese rivals. Urging staff to curtail spending, Schäfer declared: “We are letting the costs run too high in many areas,” and warned that the coming weeks and months would be “very tough” as the company tried to economise.
A big part of the problem is VW’s standalone electric range, sold under the ID badge rather than friendly and familiar names such as Golf and Polo. With the exception of the retro-flavoured ID Buzz van, the vehicles don’t look especially nice and the interiors smack of cost-cutting from a company that used to woo buyers with solid fixtures designed to resist years of wear and tear. The ID family seems blighted by VW’s insistence on lumping everyday functions onto sluggish, illogical touchscreens that feel like a sociological experiment created to trigger rage in confined spaces. Where once the carmaker mounted stereos at the top of the dash so you could change tapes without taking your eyes off the road, it now seems keen for you to drive on the wrong side of the road as you search in vain for the virtual button that turns on the air recirculation. Also, many of the ID cars come with a white steering wheel and, yes, I know people these days don’t routinely mine coal and read newspapers every morning, but can you imagine what that will look like after 50,000 miles?
Volkswagen realises it has to try harder and the result is the ID.7, a medium-sized electric hatchback that looks like a saloon. If one of the problems with the ID range has been the styling I’m not sure the 7 has entirely solved it, but at least it looks smarter than IDs 3, 4 and 5.
It is inside, however, that the car takes a proper run at addressing some ID ills. There’s masses of room in the back and the seats, created in consultation with the German awareness group Aktion Gesunder Rücken (Healthy Back Action), are terrific. The front ones have heating, cooling, electric adjustment and a flesh-prodding massage function, all of which come as standard in a simple range that has just one technical spec, rear-wheel drive with an 82kWh battery, and one trim level, the strangely named Pro Match. A twin-motor GTX trim will join it soon.
The really good news about the ID.7, however, isn’t its ability to knead your buttocks as you drive down the A34; it’s that the infuriating central touchscreen from other IDs has been rethought so that it no longer causes you to think about massaging it repeatedly with a rock. The menus are more logical and things happen when you want them to rather than seconds later. In fact Volkswagen is so eager to please that it has introduced various ways in which you can set up the screens to your liking, dropping shortcuts into a top bar and creating swipeable subscreens of the stuff you deem useful.
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It’s not a perfect system, no car touchscreen is, but it’s a darn sight less annoying than the recent efforts in its other cars. Plus, the touch-sensitive heater controls light up at night, unlike the cack-fisted cost-saving measures in other ID cars, removing the need to pat vaguely at the dash if you want to make yourself warmer after sundown.
If the ID.7 feels sturdy and expensive inside, the same is true of the way it drives. It’s not especially dynamic or exciting, but, like many generations of Passat or Golf, there’s something reassuring and dependable about it. It rides nicely, it tracks confidently on a motorway and it manages to be very quiet, even by electric car standards. Its superior dynamics help explain its better-than-average range of 383 miles. Even in the real world this should be well north of 300 miles and brief experience suggests the car’s range-o-meter is reliably honest. And on a dank night when you just want to get home, it’s the kind of car that’s going to soothe you on your way rather than stress you out. It just gets on with the job, and you get a warm feeling that it would blend into your life doing that again and again for a long time.
I wouldn’t say the ID.7 is a return to the dour but rigidly reliable Volkswagens of three decades ago, and I’m not sure anyone would buy a car like that now, but it has a certain indefinable sense of sober dependability in its construction and the way it drives that will seem familiar to anyone who enjoyed what VWs used to be like. It’s as if the company has realised that one of its selling points was cars that were easy to live with and not, as happened with the ID range, cars that were casually and constantly irritating.
If Volkswagen continues in this direction, perhaps it can put out that fire on its roof. Just as long as the fire extinguisher controls aren’t hidden on one of its old touchscreens.
