The Skoda Enyaq is one of the most accomplished electric cars on the market. Spacious, refined and easy to drive, it has a nice interior, good range and a realistic price tag.
When I was President of the Association of Scottish Motoring Writers the Enyaq was a very worthy winner of our Scottish Car of the Year title.
Two years after the Enyaq lifted the nation’s top automotive accolade, Skoda has come up with a new version of the car.
The Czech company’s design boffins have taken a chisel to the car’s rear end, creating the sleeker looking Enyaq Coupe.
It sacrifices a small amount of practicality for the kind of slippery, sporty shape popularised by the BMW X4 and X6.
Prices
Prices start at a little under £47,000 – nearly £10,000 more than entry level versions of the Enyaq SUV.
The Coupe is not available with the smaller 62kWh battery on the standard Enyaq, which partly explains why it’s more expensive.
Instead it gets a big 77kWh battery. That can be paired with rear wheel drive or four-wheel drive. The latter improves traction – handy on Scotland’s roads at this time of year – but the added weight dents range.
I drove the rear-wheel drive model in SportLine Plus spec, which had a price tag just north of £50,000.
With 204bhp the Enyaq Coupe is no slouch, but nor is it edging towards being supercar fast, as some electric cars are. The 0-62mph sprint takes 8.5 seconds. For those who want more speed, there’s a ‘hot’ version of the Enyaq Coupe called the vRS, which comes with just shy of 300bhp.
I found the standard car fast enough. Power delivery is instantaneous and it’ll leap from standstill to around 40mph with some alacrity. Only if you’re trying to push from 50-70mph at pace does it begin to run out of puff.
The Enyaq Coupe’s official range is 337 miles, putting it in the upper echelons of electric cars in terms of distance you can drive.
As is the case with MPG for petrol and diesel cars, you rarely get close to the official figures. On a full battery I found the Enyaq Coupe was good for around 250 miles at this time of year. That was enough to get me from Dundee to North Berwick and back to visit a friend’s litter of golden retriever puppies.
Road trip with Enyaq Coupe
I started with around 95% battery and after a 200 mile round trip still had 18% left. Looking to top up quickly, I plugged into the fancy new 150kW charger on Dundee’s Clepington Road, only to find it was putting out a measly 26kW.
You get fined £10 if you stay longer than 70 minutes, so I got up to 60% and then had to move to the Lochee station to finish charging. I like electric cars but the infrastructure has got to become more reliable.
The Enyaq Coupe itself is excellent though. All the superlatives that have been laden on its SUV sibling apply here. At 70mph on the M90 it’s extremely quiet inside. There’s plenty of head and legroom for four large adults, and the rear seats can fit in three people if you need them to. A panoramic glass sunroof adds light and luxury without impacting much on head room.
My only gripes are the tiny cup holders and the heating system being controlled by touchscreen instead of user-friendly dials.
At 570 litres, the boot is only 15 litres shy of the Enyaq SUV’s. The sloping roofline makes the space a bit less usable but it’s still a very practical car.
From the driver’s perspective the steering is nicely weighted, acceleration is smooth and it remains flat through corners. Ride quality is good too, easily absorbing bumps and other imperfections.
I thoroughly enjoyed my week with the Skoda Enyaq Coupe. It’s extremely stylish but maintains most of the practicality of its SUV sister car.
Facts
Price: £50,405
0-62mph: 8.5 seconds
Top speed: 99mph
Range: 337 miles
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