Skoda has at last confirmed plans to bring the full Enyaq iV electric vehicle range in Australia, but production shortages mean it won’t be ready to start taking orders until the second half of 2023.
Based on the current timeline, deliveries probably won’t start until 2024.
Both the conventional SUV and coupe-crossover body styles will come to Australia, serving as the first electric cars in the Czech brand’s local range.
Having just received sign-off, Skoda Australia says it’s not yet in a position to determine market pricing, health of supply, or what manner of sales channel/s it will opt to use for the Enyaq.
Skoda becomes the third Volkswagen Group Australia (VGA) brand to divulge its electric vehicle strategy after Audi and new-kid-on-the-block Cupra – before Volkswagen itself, although Volkswagen’s local arm is expected to have an ID-related announcement coming soon.
“We definitely have an EV strategy,” Skoda Australia head of sales Kieran Merrigan said this week.
“What I can confirm is the Enyaq has [just] been approved for our market, and we will start taking orders during next year.”
The VGA brands have all, to greater and lesser degrees, been faced with challenges when it comes to securing allocation of European electric vehicles for the distant Australian market, despite the rapid growth in EV take-up here.
Production levels are still lower than demand, and the Group prefers to allocate limited supplies of battery-electric vehicles to countries with fines in place for brands that exceed fleet-wide average CO2 emissions, as explained to us by VGA’s managing director Paul Sansom.
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“[A federal CO2 target on car brands] really is the critical question, if we don’t have that legislation in the market, then they’re going to prioritise the markets that have, to avoid very significant fines. It changes the game completely, it really does, and it will almost change the game overnight if we can get those [here],” Mr Sansom said.
The Enyaq iV is based on Volkswagen’s ubiquitous MEB electric architecture and comes with two battery options, plus either rear- or all-wheel drive. The Enyaq coupe will also come in RS guise with 220kW of power.
Read all about the Enyaq iV range in our previous coverage here:
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