Skoda Enyaq iV review

The Enyaq’s interior is much less annoying than the ID.4’s, chiefly because it has fewer of those infuriating touch sensitive buttons and sliders. For example, the steering wheel has a smattering of normal buttons and a clickwheel for volume: they’re far easier to use than the VW’s touchpads, and there’s significantly less risk of accidentally muting the radio with your palm whenever you turn left.

Ahead of the driver is an unusually small screen – a far cry from normal digital instrument clusters, it really only displays speed, charge and the status of the adaptive cruise control. So nothing useful like sat nav directions or radio station choices when you need to keep your eyes on the road. It’s clear and easy to use, though we do wish the range readout gave you a percentage as well as miles remaining (percentages are predictable, how many miles the car thinks it can do before it runs out of juice isn’t. On a 60-mile drive indicated range only fell 30 miles).

What about the infotainment?

The central screen is a generous 13 inches. It does take a little while to wake up when you switch the car on, which is annoying if you're in a rush, but after that it responds pretty quickly to your inputs and has a sensible UI. There’s a row of shortcut buttons underneath for your heated screens, drive modes and so on.

A touch slider directly under the screen does volume (a little awkwardly – don't rest your hand there to use the touchscreen while you're driving), while quick access to the climate controls/heated seats is via a band that runs across the bottom of the touchscreen whether you’re looking at the map, radio, Apple CarPlay or anything else. Sure we’d like physical climate controls but hey, most of the industry has abandoned these so it's not a Skoda-only problem. At least the Czech brand's implementation is better than most. 

Will my passengers enjoy the ride?

All the seats are comfortable and there’s plenty of room for people and things. The flat floor means it’s easy to sit three-abreast in the back. Shame the rear bench doesn’t slide about like it does in a Kodiaq, but there’s decent legroom anyway. Up front the driving position is well judged. Clever Skoda-y touches include an umbrella secreted in the driver’s door and an ice scraper hidden in the tailgate.

There’s no storage space under the bonnet like you get in a Tesla, but the boot is big 585 litres with the seats up and 1,710 litres with all the seats folded flat. That’s more than you get in the VW ID.4 and Audi Q4 e-tron.

Cable storage is under the boot floor with a compartment right by the lip, which means you don't have to completely clear the space to get at your cables. But if you’re fully loaded it still means shoving bits and pieces about. A watertight frunk really would solve this.