Skoda Enyaq long-term test: report 7

The car Skoda Enyaq iV 60 Loft Nav Run by Darren Moss, deputy editor

Why it’s here To show that it’s possible to use an electric car as your sole vehicle, even if you can’t charge it at home

Needs to Have enough range to not need charging every day, be comfortable for longer trips, and function as a mobile office when needed

Mileage 2082 List price £34,850 Target Price £34,850 Price as tested £40,005 Test range 190 miles Official range 256 miles

15 February 2022 – The last resort

Whether it's running down the street with a bag over your head to avoid the rain, or cancelling your lost debit card having given up on ever finding it, there are plenty of examples of so-called ‘last resort’ measures. And when you drive an electric vehicle (EV), a last resort means using a three-pin plug to charge it up.

This is something, I’ve found, that very few EV owners regularly do. After all, it’s painfully slow – a full charge in this way takes around 27 hours for my Skoda Enyaq, adding range at a snail-like eight miles per hour. Compare that with the nine hours the same charge takes using a 7.4kWh wallbox charger, and you can see why most EV drivers have one of these fitted at home when they decide to go electric.

The trouble is, my parents still drive petrol cars. So, when I pop home to Kettering for a visit, I inevitably arrive with 60 miles or so of range left from my full battery – enough to pootle around town to see friends, sure, but nowhere near enough to get me back to London again. Of course, my parents don’t have a wallbox, so I have no alternative but to plug the Enyaq into the three-pin socket in the garage in order to top up its battery.

Unlike the Type 2 charging cable you use to plug the Enyaq into a wall box or public charging point, the three-pin socket connector is a bulky thing. There’s a plastic transformer box to regulate the charge going into the car and an array of LED lights to confirm that things are working. When I plug the socket end into the wall, the LEDs on the box go green, and Mum and Dad’s electricity flows into my car.

The Enyaq makes checking whether your car is charging easy. If, like me, you like to check, double check and then check these things again, all you need to do is look at the charging port, which has a handy light above it to show the status. White means it’s waiting to connect, green means all is well and red means it’s time to dig out the Enyaq’s owner’s manual.

Of course, living in a flat, I can’t charge at my own home at all, and that means I mostly rely on the public network. Consequently, because electricity invariably costs more from such chargers, running an electric car is more costly than you might expect. Still, in the same way that I’ll pay more to have a reusable coffee cup rather than a single-use one, in an effort to reduce waste and save the planet, I didn’t just choose an electric car to save money.

Of course, living in a flat, I can’t charge at my own home at all, and that means I mostly rely on the public network. Consequently, because electricity invariably costs more from such chargers, running an electric car is more costly than you might expect. Still, in the same way that I’ll pay more for a reusable coffee cup rather than a single-use one, in an effort to reduce waste and save the planet, I didn’t just choose an electric car to save money.

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