SKODA ENYAQ İV VRS

Will our latest arrival give us what we expect from a driver's car, an EV and a Skoda?

- PIERS WARD

FIRST REPORT

WHY WE'RE RUNNING IT

To see if a vRS badge can make an electric car exciting

Sometimes you get a subliminal sense of where a car is aimed at by reading the press bumf that comes with the launch. It's like a politician's speech: if he or she mentions 'change' 25 times in 30 minutes, you know there's a transformation coming. Well, that's what they would like you to think, at any rate...

With the Skoda Enyaq iV VRS, it's not quite so clear-cut. Sure, there's a healthy dose of "sporty" and "athletic", but more where the design is concerned rather than the chassis or suspension. The power gets a look-in, but not with any headline claims; instead, we're treated to a short intro on it being its maker's first all-electric car and how sustainable it is.

So what actually is it? In summary, it's Skoda's first EV but with the wick turned up. At 295bhp, it's the most powerful car Skoda has yet built, offering a 0-62mph time of 6.5sec thanks to its four-wheel-drive set-up (twin permanent magnet synchronous motors) and a battery with a 77kWh usable capacity.

That battery, mounted skateboard-style as a result of the Enyaq running on the Volkswagen Group's MEB platform (pub ammo: it's the first MEB car to be built outside of Germany), is good for a claimed range of 323 miles.