• Cheaper to fuel than a petrol or diesel car
• 175kW charging means 300 miles of range in 28 minutes
• 77kWh battery should be enough for most owners

What are the running costs?

How cheap the Enyaq iV is to run is very much comes down to how you charge it, and what electricity tariff you have at home. Public charging for electric cars can be very expensive, especially if you want to use the fastest charging technology available, and you don’t have an up-front subscription.

But if you have a wallbox at home, recharging an Enyaq iV will be significantly cheaper than refuelling a diesel or petrol. This explains its excellent Miles Per Pound (MPP) figure of 5.4 - 12.4. If you’re a company car driver, you can also enjoy huge tax savings due to the Enyaq iV attracting a 0% rating for Benefit in Kind (BIK).

Two battery pack sizes are currently available to Enyaq iV buyers in the UK: 52kWh and 77kWh (for kilowatt hour, the standard measure of electric vehicle battery capacity). Skoda quotes a WLTP-backed range figure of 234 miles for the Enyaq 50. From our experience, the 52kWh pack was only good for about 110-odd miles in freezing weather.

Cold temperatures can have a drastically negative effect on the performance and efficiency of an EV’s battery, and so the results we achieved aren’t necessarily indicative of how well the battery would perform under every day conditions. That being said, it was still quite disappointing just how quickly the car ate through remaining miles. Over the course of an entire weekend with 320 miles covered, the Enyaq 50 averaged an efficiency of 2.8 miles per kWh. When multiplied by the capacity of the battery, that number suggests a total range of 145 miles.

With the faster 175kW charging system installed and access to the public charging network, you can charge up to 80% of the 77kWh battery capacity in 28 minutes. Entry-level Enyaq iVs come with 145kW DC fast charging as standard, which should also give you an 80% charge in 28 mins. Given that the two battery packs can charge to 80% in the same amount of time at their respective maximum rates of charing power, we’d recommend avoiding the 52kWh pack if possible. If you tend to drive almost exclusively around town and have the ability to charge at home, the low battery capacity and lack of power might not affect you, but otherwise we reckon go for at least the 85 edition.

As for home charging, overnight at home using a domestic wall box from empty will take about 12 hours for the 77kWh model and eight hours for the 52kWh.

Servicing and warranty

Servicing intervals are once a year or every 20,000 miles. It should be cheaper to service than a conventional car, as there are fewer moving parts and fluids to change.

The Enyaq iV gets the usual three-year/60,000-mile Skoda car warranty – though the EV battery components are covered for eight years or 100,000 miles (whichever comes sooner). You can extend that to four years/80,000 miles, four years/100,000 miles or five years/100,000 miles as a cost option.

That level of cover is now a little off the pace compared with rivals such as Hyundai, Kia and Toyota, which in the latter case, offers up to 10 years.

Reliability

• No recalls so far
• Too new for owners to report overall
• Lots of new tech, some of it very advanced
  

Right now, it’s a little early to call on whether the Enyaq iV is reliable, but we will monitor the situation and update this section when further information arrives. There have been no safety recalls at the time of writing, but you can check the government website for up-to date information.

An update to the Enyaq at the start of 2022 includes an improved ‘Battery Care Mode’, which pre-heats or cools the battery as you approach a pre-programmed charging point to increase its lifespan.

Much of the technology is new to the Volkswagen Group, and has already had teething problems which led to the launch being delayed – especially around vehicle software. The touchscreens are an evolution of what VW’s been using, and we’ve already run into a few minor issues in testing.

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