My ENYAQ iV: The range? No problem at all!

How does the ENYAQ iV cope with an Alpine pass when tunnels are closed? What are the coolest features of the e-drive? Meet Christian and his Jarvis to find out.

1. 4. 2022 eMobility

Christian Frischknecht (33) works as a service technician for oil and gas and lives in Zürich with his wife and a six-months-old daughter. This May, they welcomed a new member of the family line-up, Jarvis the Czech e-car ŠKODA ENYAQ iV. So far, they drove more than 9,800 kilometres with it. After this experience, Christian bought one more electric ŠKODA – the CITIGO^e iV.

Christian Frischknecht with his family including J.A.R.V.I.S.

“ENYAQ iV is my first electric car, I haven’t had much contact with this technology before, apart from a few rentals here and there. Buying the car was actually quite a spur-of-the-moment thing. I and my wife read an article in the newspaper about its world premiere last September. It caught our eyes immediately, we love the design of both its interior and exterior. To be honest, I’d probably buy it even with a different drive,” Christian chuckles.

Since he has a company car, Jarvis is on duty mostly on weekends and holidays and the family uses it for all other non-work errands. The capacity of the batteries is just fine for this lifestyle – 400 kilometres is a normal stretch Christian drives on one charge, admitting he’s not a consumption freak. “I drive the way I enjoy it. The range is perfect for us, I think it’s just fine to take a 20- or 30-minute break every 300 or 350 kilometres when travelling longer distances,” he says, adding that their longest trips were to Italy and Vienna. “It was totally fine. Of course, I take a look at the route before hitting the road. It’s actually great to know in advance where you’ll be stopping.”

Since Christian doesn’t need the car every day, he didn’t have a wallbox set up at home. He usually charges on the go and in case of emergency, he can use the Juice Booster and charge from a regular socket. He says in most cases he uses ŠKODA’s POWERPASS and charges at Ionity which works super fast and the prices are reasonable.

When asked if he’s ever run out of power, he says he’s never had to stop but once it was a close call: “On our way back from Italy, the Gotthard tunnel was closed and we had to drive over the pass. We arrived to our destination with 15 per cent remaining, trembling a little.”

A network of charging stations where you can use POWERPASS