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Jun 03, 2023

Juha Saarinen: Taking a holiday roadie in a Skoda EV

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The Skoda Enyaq getting a top up in Kawakawa. Photo / Juha Saarinen

OPINION:

It's King's Birthday weekend and in the grand New Zealand holiday tradition, it was time to hit the road along with everyone else. Thank you Apple Maps for spotting the mega congestion between Orewa and Warkworth and suggesting SH16 instead; how did we cope before smart navigation?

This time the holiday roadie was different. I drove an EV, a Skoda Sportline Max 80 in beautiful blue instead of a petrol car.

Although Skoda is still tweaking the Enyaq for New Zealand conditions, such as sorting out road sign recognition and local navigation, it is very impressive … and costs a shade under a hundred grand. Sadly, that's well outside this writer's budget and it crosses the $80k Clean Car rebate line too.

The Enyaq has a slew of useful driver assistance features like lane keeping that actually works, although it feels unnerving at first to let the car steer itself through corners; it coped with the twisty Brynderwyns very well.

A 150-kilowatt engine with 310Nm torque doesn't sound very much but it's more than enough for New Zealand driving. Overseas the Enyaq can be had with more powerful engines, but the EV engine that drove the rear wheels of the car felt more than adequate on the open road.

Rear-wheel drive is perhaps a bit unusual today compared to front-wheel and all-wheel drive. Electric car designers have the option of putting the battery and engine weight on the driving wheels, and the Enyaq handles very well.

Design-wise, it's a biggish SUV but the Enyaq hides its battery undercarriage girth well without that lift-shoes look of the rounder Teslas.

No tailpipes and only a faint whirr from the engine give the EV game away.

Overall, the Enyaq is a lovely drive, quiet, comfortable (even on the huge 21-inch wheels), and spacious to boot.

The PR agency that organised the Enyaq "famil", possibly in the mistaken belief that I’m an Instagram influencer or something, mentioned the car would give even the greatest EV enthusiasts reassurance from range anxiety.

It does have an official World Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure (oddly enough, abbreviated as WLTP) range of 532km which is great. On paper, that is. I didn't have the Enyaq long enough for the onboard computer to learn my driving style, but from fully charged, the battery with 77kWh usable capacity looked like it would last 430-450km.

Now, I didn't run the battery to empty to be flatbed-trucked to the nearest charger (and you shouldn't drop below 20 per cent either) and I was neurotic enough to run the car at the maximum energy recuperation setting.

My take on EV range is that if you can go 300km and have some margin on top, it should take you most places in the North Island without problems. While larger-capacity batteries would undoubtedly be nice, with current technology they mean heaps more weight leading to greater energy consumption, and of course, longer charging times.

Range anxiety is probably more correctly described as charging angst.

It's less of a worry now, as there are heaps more charging stations out there compared to just a few years ago.

Charging pricing varies wildly. Some are free whereas others charge (NPI) up to $0.85 per kWh but at least nobody's asking per-minute money on top anymore.

It depends on the type and output of the charger, and there are at least five different plugs but not all are supported by every station. This could and should be tidied up.

Skoda gives you a RFID fob for ChargeNet, which has 50kW in many places and whopping 300kW direct current ones in Kaiwaka. Those are enormous numbers compared to charging over a normal household socket, which supplies 1.5 to 2kW and takes a very long time indeed.

The Enyaq meanwhile can charge at a maximum of 135kW, which takes the car to 80 per cent in around 28 minutes.

That is indeed rapid charging, but even at 50kW you could top up the car fairly quickly while stretching your legs or having lunch. Even though it was a public holiday weekend, the stations I used were empty but the network will need to grow or we might start reading about charge rage between EV drivers wanting to plug in.

Also, you do end up planning your route between charging stations checking out where the most powerful ones are, instead of doing the fossil fuel driver thing of taking random side treks for the hell of it because there's bound to be service stations where you go.

That is worth thinking about because for remote and rural dwellers, the growing demand for EV charging is a concern.

Charging EVs over 230-240-volt home supply, or even the 7-11kW alternating current wallboxes is better than nothing but will seem agonisingly slow for tourists spoiled by zapping their cars at 50 kW DC rates.

It's not just tourists and townies either. Locals going electric as fossil fuel prices skyrocket and internal combustion engine cars are slapped with clean car fees need access to fast charging as well.

Even though the mains grid reaches some far-flung places in our country, accessible EV charging with meaty outputs in less densely populated areas will be a challenge.

Putting it into the "who's going to pay for that?" would be a mistake though, as it risks making more remote areas unviable to live in or even to visit.

Like with broadband, now's the time to start planning on how transport in rural and remote areas can be decarbonised as well, taking advantage of technological advances in power generation and delivery.

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