In Seventh Heaven

BMW’s latest 7 Series flagship saloon takes automotive refinements to the stratosphere

- Leong Weng Kit

In the 1997 movie Tomorrow Never Dies, there was a scene in which super-spy James Bond met up with Q who handed him the keys to a brand-new BMW 7 Series sedan, equipped with the usual refinements, but of course. The state-of-the-art spy vehicle included an armoured body, bulletproof windows, machine guns, missile launchers, wire cutters, run-flat tyres and remote piloting via a special cellphone. Bond then outran and outgunned some baddies using this awesome car, without so much as ruffling his perfectly coiffed hair, fully utilising everything that the sedan had to offer. Though that 7 Series car ultimately met with a tragic end, the luxury sedan more than held its own and stole every scene it appeared in.

Flash forward 20 years and today we have BMW’s latest iteration of its flagship series in the commanding form of the 740Le xDrive. Reel life spills over to real life, as the 740Le boasts of numerous high-tech additions and goodies; things that were only possible in fiction two decades ago are now realised. Sans the death-dealing weapons, armoured body and bulletproof glass (the run-flat tyres are here!), but still cutting-edge stuff. First and foremost, this variant is a plugin hybrid, which means it uses a 2.0 litre BMW TwinPower Turbo four-cylinder petrol engine and an electric motor, powered by strategically placed lithium-ion battery cells.

At the simple touch of a button, the driver can choose how the car derives its power—Auto eDrive, the default setting, whereby the combustion engine and electric motor synchronises intelligently in powering the car; Battery Control, lets the car run entirely on engine power alone while allowing you to set a target battery percentage (up to 100 per cent) for the car to harvest energy recuperated from braking to keep the batteries levelled up and ready for later use; and Max eDrive, in which the car is run exclusively on electricity.