2024 BMW i7 M70 xDrive Is the Elephant in the Room

• BMW’s i7 M70 xDrive flagship sedan tips the scales at 5929 pounds while still capable of sprinting to 60 mph in 3.5 seconds, with a top speed of 155 mph.

• BMW M CEO Franciscus van Meel says the prospective customer is someone who would have been drawn to the V12 7-Series while it was available.

• The i7 M70 is undeniably fast but also feels heavy and ponderous on certain types of roads, even with the M-specific adaptive air suspension.

While recognizing the prodigious 650 hp from BMW’s newest and most groundbreaking battery-electric vehicle, the i7 M70 xDrive flagship sedan, it’s also necessary to recognize the elephant in the room, figuratively. It’s a huge vehicle, tipping the scales at 5929 pounds while still capable of sprinting to 60 mph in 3.5 seconds, with a top speed of 155 mph.

Which raises the question, who buys a car like this and for what purpose?

We test drove this Bavarian beast this past weekend in Portugal, along coastal asphalt south of Lisbon snaking through the Sintra mountains. Some of these two-lane winding roads were so narrow that the right tires often strayed from pavement, negotiating the soft shoulder, especially when trucks were coming the opposite way. I’ve experienced wider American sidewalks.

These roads were not ideal for this high-performance variant of BMW’s i7, which launched a year ago as part of the fully redesigned 7-Series range, including internal-combustion models.

But get this luxury EV out on the open road—preferably a highway without speed limits—and the i7 M70 xDrive is much more comfortable cruising in near silence, unless you and your passengers want to switch on the “iconic sound” of two electric motors spooling up when the accelerator pedal is pinned for overtaking in Sport mode and this portly sedan with up to 811 lb-ft of torque moves without hesitation.

Yes, the driver can determine how much powertrain sound enters the cabin, but changing those sound settings requires multiple clicks with the iDrive rotary controller in the center console or via taps on the touchscreen.

BMW’s latest operating system 8.5 infotainment architecture is a sophisticated (if not onerous) hub for changing dozens of settings, from enabling a personal WiFi hotspot and processing parking payments to finding the nearest charger and scheduling vehicle service. That’s in addition to the usual stuff like changing climate controls and using navigation.

Interior as a Sanctuary

Buying this car will require that you embrace this type of user experience, for better or worse.

Most functions demand extensive menu searching because the i7 M70’s cabin was purposely designed to be a sanctuary—visually and physically—with barely any hard buttons on the instrument panel and in the center console.