Tesla-hunting ID.7 Tourer is an old-school VW with electric power

A VW Passat without an estate version is like a "Currywurst" sausage in the Wolfsburg factory canteen without curry ketchup. Nobody knows that better than Volkswagen.

That's why they are have added an estate with tailgate to that modern equivalent of the Passat, the ID.7. It bows in a good year after it was unveiled.

This car competes for would-be load-lugging customers with the BMW i5 Touring and the upcoming Audi A6 E-tron. It will be available for all the three saloon versions.

Another obvious rival is the slope-backed Tesla 3, although that is not an estate but a five-door hatchback.

With an entry-level price sticker of €54,795, the five-door ID.7 is around €800 expensive than the saloon version. It goes on sale a little later this year and fills a niche in the EV market.

Apart from the Opel Astra and its French cousin, the Peugeot 308, estate cars are few and far between these days. Ones that come to mind are exotic Chinese imports like the MG5 and Nio ET5 or luxury editions such as the BMW i5 Touring or the Porsche Taycan Sport Turismo.

The ID.7 is rather ordinary to look at and will hardly set hearts racing. What it lacks in lustre is made up for by its practicality and the reassurance of having a major dealer backup.

To create the Tourer, VW has brought its modular electric toolkit to bear on one of the brand evergreens. At 4.91 metres, this estate car for the Generation E is the same length as the hatchback saloon but is more versatile.

There's plenty of space behind the naturally electrically-operated hatch door, all 605 litres of it with the seats upright, and 1,714 litres with the rear down. They almost fold flat.

This means that the Tourer is not only more roomy than the conventional ID.7 but is also ahead in space terms of most of the other electric SUVs in the ID family.

Despite the battery being located in the floor, there is a compartment down there is large enough to stow the charging cable. There is no frunk as on many electrics.

Towing a trailer or caravan does sap range but the ID.7 Tourer is up to the job and stowage can be enhanced with a large roof box or a bicycle rack on the trailer coupling. When unladen, this extra also fits in the boot.

The interior set-up benefits rear-seat passengers who also enjoy more headroom under the roof. And because VW has a glass roof instead of sheet metal, there is also a brighter ambience, even if the inside lacks a genuine premium feel.

For those who find it too bright, VW provides electronic shade. Instead of blinds, crystals in the glass cloud over at the touch of a button, blocking out the sun like frosted panes.

The new body variant also ushers in a new engine and battery variants in the ID.7. Instead of just the old electric motor with 210 kW/286 hp on the rear axle, VW has added a second one with 81 kW/110 hp at the front to give a system output of 240 kW/326 horsepower.

Add to this a few striking applications on the outside and a black and red interior, an adaptive chassis with 15 levels for suspension fine-tuning and sharp steering - and you have a whiff of GTI feeling.

At least that's what the marketing department hopes. Well, the sprint time of 5.5 seconds for the 0 to 100 km/h benchmark might whet the appetite for more, but enthusiasm soon evaporates since the GTX runs out of urge at 180 km/h.

The new battery, which VW is installing in both body variants for a surcharge of just under €5,000, is more impressive. It has a capacity of 86 kWh instead of 77 kWh and so extends the range by almost 100 to up to useful 709 standard kilometres.

And VW has increased charging capacity to 200 kW so that the driver does not gain longer journey times at the expense of hanging around too long at the charging station.

Less than 30 minutes is enough to replenish the batteries from 10 to 80% in the best-case scenario - provided there a suitable charging point is near at hand.

This means that the ID.7 offers two very distinct characters. In uprated GTX guise, it can sometimes quicken the pulse when accelerating and with the large battery, it becomes an endurance runner for frequent drivers. This brings it close in character to an old-school Passat TDI diesel.

Volkswagen's Passat was always a roomy car for all seasons and ID.7 continues in this tradition. Naturally, such an extensive upgrade has its price. Families and frequent drivers will need to dig deeper into their pockets if they want to keep up with the times and drive electrically.