Last year (in 2021) I finally made the switch to an EV. Now, after 10k kilometers, a few long road trips and day-to-day usage its time for a first summary. Of course it would be better to drive no car at all, however I´m not ready for this step yet. So the next best option to a dinosaur guzzler is a 100% electric car. After some back and forth I went for a Skoda Enyaq IV 80. TL;DR: Best decission ever, best car I´ve ever owned.

The “good”

  • General build quality of the car
  • Most of the assistants
  • Skoda Powerpass (Amazing Charging Network with really great prices)
  • Long Distance Travel. We did a few (international) roadtrips in the 1.000 km Range and never had the feeling that we needed to wait for the car. Only once there was a sign of a “Ladestau” but this sorted itsself out within 5 minutes (and yes, last weekend of the summerholidays on top of Brennero).
  • Insurance. Quite cheap and my insurer offered a special electriv vehicle rate.
  • HVAC. The heating pump is just amazing. You can start it remote via the app and once you get to the car its either cool in summer or pretty toasty in winter.
  • Noise levels of the car. It´s well soundproven and the absence of exploding dinosaurs in the front ensure it´s also realy quiet.
  • Space: The car is spaceous. I´ve driven a Skoda Superb before and the Enyaq has a smaller footprint but feels nearly the same space inside.

The “neutral”

  • Wintertires and rims. Wanted “original” (=manufactore made) ones. Bought them at the place where I bought the car. They offered competitive pricing, but cheap is different.
  • Charging speed. It´s artificially capped at 125 / 126 kW. Its okay, but if you know the DC-DC converter can do more, it´s a little bit unsatisfying. Will hopefully be solved via software update.
  • Charging curve. The curve drops of quite early when fastcharing. I hope the higher charging speeds are kept longer once new software is rolled out.

The “needs improvement”

  • Range in winter. Due to an to early heating of the battery pack the consumption drastically increases. Skoda (Volkswagen, Cariad) promised that an software update will fix this.
  • Charging in winter. Due to the lack of preheating of the battery before a planned charging stop the car coldgates at chargers below 0 degrees.
  • Software:
    • Route planning options are not so good. You can´t filter charging stations (lets say by loading speed, network operator).
    • Snappyness. The whole software sometimes feels rather slow.
    • Lane-Assit in roadworks. Once you have a reduced width (with yellow instaed of white lane markers) the car is constantly complaining that you should keep in the middle of your lane.
    • Phantom-Breaking. On certain stretches of the Autobahn the car “remembers” old roadworks and tries to limit your speed to the speedlimit of the roadwork.
  • Software-Updates:
    • The new better software 3.0 was said to roll out ealier.
    • The software update to 3.0 can´t be done OTA. You´ll need to go to your / a certified cardealer.

All in all there´s way more positive than negative. I´m still really happy to have bought this car. Running costs are a bless (especially with the high gas prices right now). Once the software 3.x will be also given to existing owners I think a lot of the negatives will also be mitigated.