The Bundesautobahn 7 starts at Flensburg and travels through the two states at Schleswig and Rendsburg, through the world's busiest artificial waterway of Kiel Canal crossing the Rader high bridge.

South of Bordesholm, the highway has been continuously expanded to six lanes since 2014 due to the high traffic volume to Hamburg.

There are several reasons for this: the motorway runs through inner-city areas, there is a lot of holiday traffic on the route during school holidays, there are practically no opportunities for bypassing, the speed is permanently limited to 80 km / h as an urban area and the section is extended, South of the equipped with four tubes to two lanes Elbe tunnel leads the A7 on the highway Elbmarsch, the longest road bridge in Germany, right through the harbor area and the Harburg mountains to Lower Saxony.

South of the Hattenbacher triangle is the A7 sections four-lane expanded, leads past Fulda, where the A 66 branches off to Hanau and reaches Bavarian territory.

The completion of the south in the 1980s leads past Rothenburg ob der Tauber on the western edge of the Frankenhöhe to the freeway junction Feuchtwangen / Crailsheim (intersection with the A 6 Saarbrücken-Heilbronn-Nuremberg- Waidhaus) and partly Baden-Württemberg area over the Ostalb, for the crossing even two tunnels had to be built, via Aalen to Ulm.

South of Ulm it goes through the Illertal parallel to the river back to Bavaria, via Memmingen (cross with the A 96 Lindau Munich) and Kempten (branch to the A 980 to Oberstdorf), over the 2009 completed section through the Reinertshoftunnel to the edge of the foot of the Alps.

The highway replaced as a trunk connection the imperial or federal roads 76, 77, 205 and 4 (Flensburg-Hamburg), 3 (Hamburg-Kassel) and 27 (Göttingen-Würzburg), which in turn went back to medieval precursors.

After World War 2 the route of A7 was altered leaving some of the abandoned bridge structures of Strecke 46 to be preserved as historic monuments.

From the south (Hanover) coming vehicles had there at the threading to the A1 in the direction of west (Bremen) drive through a steep curve for many years.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the highway was built in the Hamburg area and the so-called north axis to Denmark and handed over to traffic.

On 13 July 1976, Ernst Haar, Parliamentary State Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Transport, and Schleswig-Holstein's Minister of the Interior Rudolf Titzck solemnly opened the motorway section from Tarp to Handewitt.

Only in 1978, the last vacant space between Tarp and Schuby was closed, so that the highway could be driven from Hamburg to the federal border.

On 13 June 1978, Queen Margrethe II and President Walter Scheel opened the border crossing Ellund, accompanied by Prime Minister Gerhard Stoltenberg and the Flensburg Mayor Ingrid Gross.

Since the last 6.8 kilometers to the junction Oy-Mittelberg were already released a year ago, the highway was already passable from Denmark to the Allgäu.

The tunnel is supposed to relieve the surrounding communities of the high traffic volume during vacation time.

In this four-lane section can be released with a traffic control system as needed both hard shoulder as each third lane.

Because of the steep climbs and gradients, the section is known as the Kassel mountains and is considered by motorists to be particularly demanding for trucks and caravans.

On 16 December 2016, Prime Minister Albig released the first section of the 6-lane A7 between the Bordesholm motorway junction and the AS Neumünster-Nord interchange.

It has been agreed that the operating company will carry out the remaining work on the six-kilometer stretch between Neumünster and Bordesholm and then transfer it to the state of Schleswig-Holstein.

As part of the widening works, the A7 north of the Elbtunnel three covers of the highway are provided in Schnelsen, Stellingen, Othmarschen and Bahrenfeld.

The allotments that have existed in the area for 90 years are to be "relocated" to these and thus ensure that the districts separated by the motorway grow together again.

The plan approval decision for the six-lane expansion between the triangle Hamburg-Nordwest and Schnelsen was made on 15 December 2012.

For the section triangle Walsrode to Bad Fallingbostel, the plan approval decision was issued on 4 August 2015.

The short four-lane section to the north of the Salzgitter triangle with the A 39 was upgraded to a priority requirement in 2016 with the amendment of the Fernstraßenausbaugesetz - bottleneck elimination.

The continuation to Göttingen is unannounced plan-established, with the exception of the sections between Seesen and Nörten-Hardenberg already finished six-lane expansion and is in the status of ongoing and firmly scheduled in the highway development law.

According to this audit report of the Federal Court of Auditors, the expansion would not be cheaper in a PPP, but by 12.8 million euros more expensive.

The project was awarded with the contract beginning 1 May 2017 to the consortium Via Niedersachsen with the shareholders VINCI Concessions Deutschland GmbH and Meridiam Investments.

On 26 August 2015, the planning approval procedure was initiated for the conversion and expansion of the tank and service facility Göttingen with the construction of the Rosdorf exit.

[1] In the course of the expansion, the refueling and rest area Kassel (-West and -Ost) was dismantled and rebuilt at the location of the Rastanlage Kassel-Ost between 2016 and 2018.

[4][5] Through the Rhön Mountains and Spessart, where the autobahn was known as Strecke 46 (Route 46), some bridges were built as early as 1937, but construction was halted in October 1939 by World War II.