Skoda Enyaq Coupe 85x long term test: living with a sensible electric SUV in 2026

Report 1: Goodbye, mad BMW EV — hello very sensible Skoda Enyaq

Our quirky electric BMW family car has gone the distance, so we’re plugging in a big sensible Skoda for a bit instead.

Date: 10 March 2026 | Current mileage: 4750 | Claimed efficiency: 3.9 miles/kWh | Actual efficiency: 2.8 miles/kWh

So here it is. The Most World’s Most Sensible Electric Car. Surely, right? The Captain Raymond Holt of EVs to the Jake Peralta that is the BMW i3. Or, for those who don’t watch Brooklyn 99 (why not?), the Marks & Spencer of EVs to the TK Maxx that is the BMW i3. 

Bringing up the i3 is apt. Not just because it’s one of the only slightly wacky electric cars this side of a Citroen Ami — most EVs are SUVs — but because it’s the car that our Enyaq is replacing. We — the Nichol family, that is — were merrily running an i3 as our main family car until recently, when a meeting with ice (the substance, not the horrendous organisation) resulted in it losing one of its wheels. Then losing its life completely. (No humans were hurt, thankfully.)

We know for certain that the Enyaq Coupe will be a better family car. Not just because it’s bigger than the i3, has a proper boot, proper battery range and doesn’t have stupid rear doors. But because we tested an Enyaq Coupe for a bit last year. A vRS one that was so bright green that our daughter wouldn’t let us take her to school in it. LOL. 

This one is a much more subtle shade of green. Much more Skoda. It should be more economical too. But in every other way we expect it to pick up where the last one left off. We loved it. 

But the thing about having an Enyaq painted toxic green was it gave a fundamentally extremely sensible car this heir of stupidity, and by extension a dose of personality. Much of what felt good about that particular car was, it seemed — and as stupid and futile as this sounds — anchored in the paint job. I’m already worried that this foliage green SUV is a little too muted, a little too… dull.

But hey, you don’t have to have it in this colour, And actually, our aforementioned daughter loves it. She’s let us take her to school and everything. Lucky us. And having had the car for a few weeks now, everything that was great about it has come flooding back. The comfort, the quiet, the space… the stereo. Colour aside, this particular car is exactly how I’d spec one myself: Sportline Plus spec with the bigger wheels option. 

Sportline Plus has absolutely masses of stuff, most of it conducive to a more pleasant experience day-to-day: Canton sound system, for the bass, head-up display, for the safety, wireless phone charging, for the tidy interior, and adaptive cruise control, for the traffic jams. (True story, I hate cruise control normally, but the automatic stop and go function makes slow moving traffic MUCH easier to live with.) 

Some of the tech isn’t to my taste, though. Like Predictive Cruise Control, which basically takes over the driving by slowing through car down automatically for traffic lights, junctions and speed limit changes. And we will talk about the cup holders, too. Something to look forward to, that. See you in April…