Volkswagen ID.7 - long-term review

Although we have a, erm well-loved Dacia Duster as the regular family car, the ID.7 is still accumulating the miles. Mostly on trips to Norwich (my daughter is doing a Masters at UEA), or airport runs. Oddly enough, these are all about 150 miles or so round trips so they’re well within the car’s range. Even through the winter, which has seen a full charge drop precipitously from 320 miles (the best) to 239 (the worst).

Here’s the important bit. In the five months that I’ve had the ID.7, I’ve only had to use a public charger twice. Granted, we’re in the sticks and one of the reasons we moved this far out almost 20 years ago wasn’t just so my children could have a bucolic upbringing, it was so we could get decent off-street parking. No more dicing with the Judge Dredd-style parking enforcement officers of the London borough of Hackney.

In 2025, it also gets you the option of fitting a wall-box, so that charging a BEV is simplicity itself. Sure, I miss London, but when I talk to my TG colleagues, I’m pretty sure the palaver of finding a – functioning – lamp-post charger would turn me into Basil Fawlty.

And then there’s the cost. My electricity provider offers what it calls a Next Drive EV tariff. That means I’m paying 6.7p per kWh if/when I charge the car between midnight and 7am. (The national average varies according to region but is around 24.86p per kWh.) That’s with E.ON, which is currently offering the most competitive rate. British Gas is offering a two-rate tariff that costs 7.9p per kWh between midnight and 5am, Octopus is 7p per mile, and EDF 8.99p per mile. In order to qualify for any of these, you need a smart meter.

And a patient demeanour, because working through all the possibilities is time-consuming. You’ve also got to remember to compare the daytime/peak rate of the EV tariff, which’ll invariably be higher. But then you compare it to the cost of charging on a public network. For example, BP Pulse charges 0.59p per kWh on a 7kW charger (paid contactless), rising to 0.85p if you use a 50kW rapid charger. According to Zapmap, the weighted average PAYG price to charge on the the public charging network in December 2024 was 53p per kWh on a slow/fast charger and 80p/kWh on a rapid/ultra rapid set-up.

I’ve got into the habit of charging the car about once every three days, almost always overnight. Maths was never my forte and getting on top of all this has given me a headache. But in terms of pure energy costs, a domestic wallbox – if you have the space – is clearly the way to go. And E.ON says it’s electricity is 100 per cent renewable.