The Elroq isn’t the boxiest or loftiest compact SUV, but it’s nonetheless easy to get into, and there’s enough head room and base height adjustability to perch up high and boost visibility.
It has a modern, informal, lounge-like cabin that uses appealing cloth textiles as decoration. Easily smudged piano black trim was hardly to be found on our test car, whose Loft design selection gave it recycled grey cloth trim instead, on the dashboard, door panels, centre console and seats. Alternative designs (Lodge, Suite, Sportline) shift the balance of the materials used towards a more lavish or sporty feel, but all adopt recycled materials where possible.
The cabin’s standard for material fit and finish is moderately good, with patterns and grains used cleverly to break up bigger hard mouldings where they appear (and they do appear fairly widely). Some fixtures could be more solidly secured, but none rattled or felt flimsy.
The Elroq has a small digital instrument binnacle whose content can be tailored easily via controls the steering wheel spokes; a 13in touchscreen infotainment system central on the fascia; and quite a lot of oddment storage between the door bins (lined), cupholders (small, but adjustable for size), armrest cubby (with a removable drawer insert), and lower storage tray beneath the centre stack. The glovebox compartment is only half-sized on right-hand-drive cars. But further to the rear there’s a removable storage box, with flexible cupholders, that can be placed on the cabin floor between the rear seats to stow drinks and keep devices safe, which is a clever, Skoda-typical feature. There are more cupholders, and a little additional storage, in the fold-down armrest.
Second-row passenger space is roughly class-typical, though there’s plenty of head room for bigger, taller adults, and the car’s cabin floor doesn’t feel especially high.
But boot space is better. At 470 litres, it is claimed by Skoda to be class-leading, though Renault (whose Scenic has 540 litres) would beg to differ. According to our measurements, the Elroq’s boot is indeed a little longer and wider than both the Scenic’s and that of a Kia EV3 and Mini Countryman, however.
The storage area is particularly well featured. It really does feel as though Skoda has thought of everything here. You can choose to keep your charging cable either in a deep under-floor cubby or in a dedicated storage net hanging from the bootlid. There are hooks, straps and useful smaller storage areas to both the left and right of the main load bay. And the parcel shelf itself can be set at normal or reduced height, to be used as a kind of split-level divider, if you prefer, or even clipped in almost vertically to keep taller items from falling into the passenger compartment.
Multimedia – 4 stars
Skoda has developed its own menu layout for the Elroq’s 13in infotainment system, which is a little like related Volkswagen Group systems but makes some noticeable gains on usability.
A configurable home screen gives you good top-level access to frequently accessed menus, but there are also user-customisable shortcut bars on both the upper and lower margins of the screen, which are always displayed, and therefore allow you to put the screens and functions you most frequently need within one touch of anywhere.
There are also physical shortcut buttons for the car’s drive mode selection, ADAS, climate control and automated parking systems just below the central air vents, which are always reassuringly easy to find when driving, with minimal distraction. There’s no physical cursor controller for the whole system, though, either on the centre console or steering wheel, which is a bit of a miss for a brand whose focus is so squarely on ease of use.
Wireless smartphone mirroring for both Apple and Android devices is standard, and an iPhone connection proved easy to make and very reliable. Air-conditioned wireless device charging (for one device only) is included with upper-tier models. A colour head-up display, meanwhile, with augmented reality navigation guidance can be added to Edition and Sportline cars as part of Skoda’s Advanced Package (from £2250), though our test car didn’t have it.
