Bavarian brand prepares to launch its all-new 7 Series limousine, including the i7 EV, and it has finally put comfort as its centrepiece
It’s a brave new world for BMW’s flagship limousine, with this year’s all-new BMW 7 Series arriving in petrol, diesel, plug-in hybrid and, for the first time, full-electric forms. BMW has prioritised luxury and comfort, especially in the back seat, for a car that sells more in China than anywhere else. We drove prototypes of the V8 petrol and the i7 EV, and first impressions suggest they should be enough to finally concern the Mercedes-Benz S-Class.
All change for BMW 7 Series
BMW has taken a massive risk with its all-new 2022 BMW 7 Series, because its new flagship limousine will bring not only traditional petrol and diesel engines, plus a petrol-based plug-in hybrid powertrain, but for the first time a pure battery-electric version – all on the same core platform.
So, no skateboards here.
What’s more, all the Sevens look the same (or, at least, they will once all the camo tape comes off), with the exception being a distinct lack of exhaust outlets for the battery-powered i7 EV.
Arch-rival Mercedes-Benz kept the S-Class in its traditional place atop the family tree and added the EQS EV, with its own body style. Audi has chosen to, err, moderately facelift the A8, and that’s it, at least for now.
While BMW didn’t give us full details on the two cars we drove, we had the V8 twin-turbo 760i offering about 400kW of power, and a version of the i7 that felt suspiciously like it was sharing its powertrain with the BMW iX xDrive50.
What we have is a car that is longer, wider, taller (I mean: visibly taller) than the outgoing 7 Series, and it’s also considerably heavier.
The need to accommodate the all-electric powertrain, with two electric motors and its electron tanks, means the 7 Series has a spread of around 500kg from its lightest (740i petrol six-cylinder) to heaviest (i7 60) representatives.
Sheesh. I can’t think of another car on sale today that has a spread that wide, within the same body style. The good news is that BMW insists this is about as heavy as cars will ever be, but we’ve heard that before.
Why should I care?
BMW has been at electric vehicles for a while now and it has been circling around The EV Plan since the i3 launched without ever really locking it down until now, with the fifth generation of BMW’s EV powertrain.
The EV Plan in its final iteration looks to be a minimum-risk one, with all 2022 BMW 7 Series variants running down the same production line in Germany, so it shouldn’t be too hard to fiddle with the production mix if something proves unexpectedly popular (or, obviously, not).
There’s also the iX electric SUV, which has been well received despite its interesting looks, and the i4 fastback, and there is a replacement on the way for the i3, too.
For the new Seven, there will be a matching petrol and diesel pair of inline turbocharged 3.0-litre sixes at the entry level, but we didn’t have access to them.
BMW was vague about which i7 EV we were testing, but assured us it had more than 350kW of power, more than 100kWh of lithium-ion battery capacity and would stretch out to more than 600km on the WLTP cycle.
All new 7 Series cars will also be made in a carbon-neutral factory, and BMW has pushed its suppliers to deliver carbon-neutral parts, including the battery pack.
Assisted driving and the sensor suite
The long, long 2022 BMW 7 Series body (almost 5.4 metres) is accessed by flush-fitting door-handles (don’t let the stickers deceive you), and the doors have their own sensors, so they stop if they detect pedestrians, cars, cyclists or motorcyclists coming along.
And the sensors keep coming, mostly for crash protection and advanced driver assistance systems, up to Level 3, where BMW plans to take over liability.
It has four short-range radars, a long-range radar and a medium-range LiDar, plus a horde of ultra-sound sensors to take the sensing ability out to 300 metres. The LiDar reaches between 190 and 250 metres, with a 120-degree by 15-degree sensing range, accurate to 0.1 degrees, and it’s not a mechanical LiDar, either.
Its Traffic Jam Assist, developed with Mobileye and Intel, will allow the driver to “do anything but fall asleep because he has to be ready to take over” at up to 60km/h.
If that doesn’t seem fast enough, consider that more than 80 per cent of the time, Chinese drivers average less than 28km/h – and half of all 7 Series are sold in China.
And, BMW claims, it has shown that its Level 3 system can drive a billion kilometres without a fatal crash, which is more than 20 per cent better than the average of human drivers.
What’s new and/or good in here?
A few things BMW has been fiddling for years are now realities in the 2022 BMW 7 Series.
The first, and quite possibly most helpful (for some people, and we all know at least one), is a reversing assistant that remembers exactly how you’ve driven the last 200 metres, down to the centimetre, and will cheerfully reverse out of that tricky driveway or dead-end street for you.
You just sit there and let it do its thing and it’s quite impressive. It should mean the end of all those kerbed wheels, knocked-over wheelie bins and hedge-scratched bumpers.
It also always remembers where you’ve been, so it can recognise when it’s on the aforementioned tricky driveway and take over for you, for up to 200 metres.
Its parking assistant has been expanded, taking the existing parallel and 90-degree parking capability and adding three-point turns (less needed now with four degrees of rear-wheel steering) and open parks.
The old 7 Series needed other cars around it to figure out how to place itself, but the new one can guide itself into parking spaces with just white lines and no neighbours.
It can also park itself, without you in it, provided you and your app-equipped phone remain within six metres of it. That should be helpful because it feels like it is mega-wide these days and it might not be easy to get out of it inside some garages.
It also has Level 3 hands-off driving on the books, due to arrive in a year or so (the delay relates to homologating it with various government agencies and insurance risk assessments, because BMW will accept liability for the cars when they’re in Level 3 mode).
Driving and comfort
BMW insists there is a whole new world of comfort in the 2022 BMW 7 Series that it’s never been able to deliver before, and it’s right – up to a point.
It’s not that it hasn’t been able to deliver it before, but that it hasn’t been of particular interest to the company, because it might have made it compromise the 7 Series’ handling prowess, which has usually been easily the pick of the German limos.
But times change and it’s hard to be a pure sporting limo beyond two tonnes (BMW is not saying exactly how heavy it is), and the emphasis has clearly been put on comfort, especially in the rear seats.
To give you an idea how much focus has been put on comfort, the i7’s HL (heavy load) 285/35 R21 front and 255/40 R21 rear tyres are filled with an acoustic-absorbing foam, which soaks up road-noise frequencies before they even hit the suspension hardware, much less the cabin.
All the Ssevens ride on air suspension, with active roll stabilisation through the 48-volt, electrified anti-roll bar, and there’s rear-wheel steering. Like the S-Class and the A8, the 7 Series now tilts in corners to minimise the movement felt by the passengers.
The V8 feels like a lovely machine now, with more gentlemanliness about it than it ever had before, but it’s not the big story.
Somehow, the i7 feels like the more organised of the two 7 Series prototypes we tested, with fuss-free punch, but mega-planted handling and an ability to ease its way through corners that belies its heft and size, all while carrying astonishing speed.
There are times when it feels as though it could use more punch, especially from around 60km/h, but then a glance at the speedo indicates it is doing just fine, thanks very much, and feels like it pulls to 100km/h in around five seconds, or a tick under.
The brakes, underutilised in the i7, pull up strongly, and whatever BMW is claiming about ride comfort is true. It is easily the most lump-absorbent BMW of all time.
It’s even as-advertised in the rear, where BMW has given it enough legroom to stretch out to full leg length (admittedly, not enormous for me) and the sound levels are extraordinarily low from the wheel-arches and the limited amounts of wind fluttering past the glasshouse.
Editor’s opinion
The 2022 BMW 7 Series is a limousine of the kind BMW never knew it had in it, and the engineers have seized on the prioritisation of comfort like a long-denied toy.
On initial impressions, the i7 is easily the pick of the two we drove, and you’d have to be doing long highway drives – often – for your life to suit the V8, with its quicker refilling times, more than the EV.
Otherwise, the petrol-powered 7 Series is in front on cost and weight, and it also has a slender advantage in agility.
But the i7 feels like the most comprehensively organised luxury vehicle BMW has ever built, and this is just a prototype. We still haven’t had access to its dashboard or its full suite of interior details.
There is more headroom than the Mercedes EQS, and the 7 Series does without its odd floaty feel, too. It’s a class above anything from Tesla in terms of luxury, and it is moving into the territory recently claimed by Lucid.
The 2022 BMW 7 Series promises to be very good, indeed.
How much does the 2022 BMW 760i Series cost?Price: TBCAvailable: Late 2022Engine: 4.4-litre twin-turbo petrol V8Output: 400kW/750Nm (estimated)Transmission: Eight-speed automaticFuel: TBCCO2: TBC
Safety rating: TBC
Keyword: BMW i7 and 7 Series 2022 Review – International