BMW i7 chauffeur hire

Because there is no shorter version of this car, the rear compartment gets the whole benefit of the wheelbase. Legroom is close to the S-Class, the seat base is a little flatter, and the backrest angle is adjustable from a panel set into the door. A tall passenger has no reason to ask for the front seat to be moved.

The interior lighting is the part visitors comment on: a lit band runs across the dashboard and into the doors, and at night it gives the cabin a soft glow instead of the usual patchwork of screens. It sounds like a gimmick until you have sat in it on a wet January evening on the A4.

BMW offers a large fold-down screen for the rear compartment and a reclining lounge seat behind the front passenger on some specifications. Rather than describe either as though it were standard, we confirm what the car allocated to your booking actually carries on the written quotation. If one of them matters to your journey, say so in the enquiry and you will get a straight yes or no before anything is agreed.

Airport work suits this car well. A Heathrow or London City run is short enough that the car arrives with most of its battery intact, and the waiting time at a terminal is time on a charger rather than time with an engine idling outside arrivals. In a multi-storey short-stay that is a genuine practical advantage.

The pickup itself is no different from any other booking here: the flight is tracked, the chauffeur waits inside the building with a name board, and the car is brought round once you are through. What changes is the departure at four in the morning, when an electric car pulls away from a residential street without waking anyone.

For private aviation the same logic applies at the other end of the journey. Business aviation terminals and FBO aprons are short runs from anywhere sensible, so range is never the question, and the car is silent standing on an apron where engine noise carries a long way and nobody thanks you for adding to it. Timing on that work runs off the tail number rather than a scheduled arrival.

An electric drivetrain removes the two things that usually give away clumsy driving: the gearchange and the engine note. What it leaves behind is the brake pedal and the steering, and in a car this quiet both become far more obvious to the person in the back. A late, firm stop that would be masked by engine noise in another car is plainly felt in an i7.

So the technique changes. Regenerative braking is used to shed most of the speed early, with the pedal only for the last few miles an hour, and the car is brought to a halt by easing off the pressure at the very end so it settles rather than nods. Done properly, a passenger cannot tell when the car has actually stopped.

The other effect is on conversation. In near silence, ordinary road noise no longer covers a phone call, so a chauffeur working this car is more careful than usual about when to speak and when to leave the cabin alone. It also means a passenger who does want to talk never has to raise their voice, which changes the character of a long journey rather more than the drivetrain does.