Skoda recently published a press release reaffirming its commitment to making its business more sustainable and electrifying its lineup. The announcement also confirmed the Volkswagen-owned Czech automaker would launch three all-new EVs by 2026 and that it expects 70 percent of the vehicles it sells to be fully electric by the end of the decade, as it transitions to only selling EVs after 2035.
Of the three new EVs, we know one will be a smaller crossover that the brand has already teased, which will be twinned with models from Volkswagen and Seat. This smallest electric offering will be built on a simplified version of the MEB platform, called MEB Lite, and that unlike vehicles built on the standard version of the platform, the ones built on the Lite variant will be front-wheel drive in their base versions.
The second model could be an all-electric replacement to the current Octavia, which will reportedly skip the MEB platform that Skoda uses to underpin the Enyaq crossover (now also available as the sleeker Enyaq Coupe), and it will be built on the Volkswagen group’s new bespoke EV architecture called SSP (whose name is short for Scalable Systems Platform).
This platform is important because VW views it as the architecture that will replace its existing ICE platforms, as well as MEB and PPE (Premium Platform Electric, which is used in the new Porsche Macan EV or Audi Q6 E-tron models), providing a single solution for a wide range of vehicle styles.
Gallery: Foto - Skoda Vision 7S
It’s worth noting that Skoda may not have been referring to the electric Octavia replacement necessarily among the three vehicles mentioned in the press release. Older reports indicated that the three new EVs would be a subcompact model, a compact SUV and a larger seven-seater SUV that the company previewed with the Vision 7S concept (pictured in the gallery above) which revealed earlier this year.
The Vision 7S concept also gives us a pretty good idea of where Skoda’s design is headed over the next decade, as it reveals the major corporate identity update that the brand has in store. In other words, it previews the basic aesthetic of all models to be launched by the end of the decade and possibly beyond, so as far as design studies go, this one is pretty significant.
