Skoda's drive into the electric car sales space in New Zealand with the Enyaq iV isn’t just happening in the metal – virtual reality is also selling this battery electric vehicle (BEV).
Preparing for on-sale availability around September of the electric SUV has seen Skoda NZ reach beyond the usual approach of bringing in actual demonstrators, that can be examined and driven.
Welcome to the "Skodaverse".
In play from when the actual car was unveiled in late February, it’s an artificial interactive environment in which potential buyers can comprehensively explore a car using virtual reality gear gamers are well acquainted with.
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A kit that shows off in high detail the three NZ market formats and two body shapes - not just the Max edition here now - in any colour, trim or wheel design option has been kept low-key, but is making a powerful impact and paying off.
Several users have seen enough to sign sales agreements, several for a flagship Coupe – the first six-figure Skoda - that is still months from being seen in true life form on this side of the globe.
Rodney Gillard, general manager of Skoda NZ, says the latter example provides particular proof of the tool’s value at a time when all distributors are struggling to ship in stock, for a multitude of reasons.
“Being able to actually see the Coupe enabled those people to achieve a real-time consideration of how the car looks and how it differs to the sports utility we have. From that, they felt confident about buying the car.”
The virtual reality programme has been Skoda's pet project for the past decade.
Kiwis are the first customers outside of Europe to experience it - and our involvement is the first at fully national level.
Even in its home turf, the tool is only being used by a handful of selected dealerships, mainly in the capital, Prague.
“We are the pilot country for the world,” says Gillard. Not absolutely the first place to use it, but the first for whole-of-country use.
“The factory has been testing it [in the home market] but we are the first country to roll it out.”
Using virtual reality obviously limits the exposure to "look but don’t touch". But when Skoda NZ has just a small count of actual demonstrators, just enough for one per dealership, all in the same Max specification – and, on top of that, also being out of a consignment originally for Ireland, so close to but not exactly like the NZ models – it’s a great help.
Potential buyers can consider how the cheaper base SUV or dearer Coupe Max, aligns against the $97,990 Enyaq iV 80 Max SUV already here.
The immersive experience is impressively realistic. So much so dealers take precaution of asking customers to sit before donning the headset – for good reason.
Headsets can be claustrophobic for first-timers; there’s some risk giddiness trying out this equipment when standing. Or people can simply forget which reality they’re in.
“Not everyone feels comfortable wearing those goggles... a classic example is my mum; she would find them claustrophobic,” says Gillard.
“But that’s okay. You don’t absolutely have to have the goggles on to experience the technology. I or a colleague could wear the headset and we can link to the scene to a television and the customer can guide them through anything specific.”
In Europe, too, Skoda doesn’t require a customer to come into the sales space. It has teamed up with Amazon to run the virtual car showroom on Fire TV, so potential buyers can see it all without leaving home.
The scenario puts the user in a showroom in which the new car quite literally takes centre stage, set to pirouette in 360-degree three-dimensional view.
By using handsets to engage simple prompts, the user can explore the car to point of checking out the drivetrain detail and evening sit at the wheel.
One other plus is that it allows user experience of a feature that doesn’t operate until after dark on the actual car - the jazzy crystal face grille, embedded with more than 130 LEDs, which illuminate 18 transparent vertical ribs and a single horizontal bar, kicking in and out with animated welcoming and leaving sequences. It’s a Max feature that sells itself... when people see it, Gillard says.
Kiwi feedback about the VR will be of interest to the Czech marque, the local boss adds. Virtual reality and augmented reality have caught the attention of the whole of car making, and within Volkswagen Group Skoda has become a leader in exploring the potentials.
The ultimate potentials are huge.
The natural extension from showcasing is to one day enable actual vehicle purchasing. They also see this system beneficial in other ways; for dealer training, business planning and even in the factory, as a tool to explore the most logical pathways for assembling vehicles.
And test driving? Skoda’s programme is not yet at that point, but the potential where someone could experience a pre-recorded run is being looked into.
Why did Skoda decide on New Zealand? Our size, our buyer type, our enthusiasm for new technology makes us a good test ground.
“The tool is not only an additional way of selling,” Gillard says.
“It’s also a point of difference. There’s an old saying about ‘no-one cares how fast you sell, only how well’. This [technology] slows the customer down, gets them to interact at their pace.
“In a country as ours, we are never going to have to always have the ‘right’ colour or the ‘right’ spec of any product in any showroom, all of the time. This gives the salesperson the opportunity to show the car exactly as they might want to see it, in basically real life.”
The programme has been overseen from the brand’s technical gurus in Mlada Boleslav.
The software development was created by Virtuplex, a specialist developer based in in Prague and is bespoke to the NZ-market models, explains Leigh Bedford, Skoda New Zealand’s product and planning manager.
Integration with a headset and hand controls popular with gamers that retail for between $850 and $1100 was a sensible cost-saving logic, but development hasn’t been inexpensive; some degree of time and spend went into finetuning the cars to accurately represent in NZ market format.
Says Bedford: “There is a lot of time involved in the back end to match our request.” The programme is also open to further adaption. “We can add and remove features that are relevant for our market.”
Skoda has been dabbling with virtual reality for around a decade, but only drew attention to its programme when launching its first electric car concept, the Vision E, at the 2017 Shanghai Motor Show.
That event was "experienced" in eight cities in Europe as a virtual reality exercise. Participants then were able to take a walk through the display area as if they were at the actual event and involve with the car up close.
Skoda NZ knew about that, and learned a lot more when representatives visited the Czech Republic, as and when Covid restriction allowed, to decide the Enyaq’s roll-out here.
That process has not been easy. All car makers were hit hard by the coronavirus outbreak three years ago.
While factories have re-opened, they’re not fully back to speed thanks to the ongoing travails of contagion-triggered semi-conductor shortage.
VW Group has supply uncertainty due to the war in the Ukraine, where key component makers are based. On top of all that, big demand for locally-made electric cars in Europe has weakened the supply chain to markets further afield. And none are more remote than NZ. Accordingly, the potential of this technology stands being embedded is certain.
“We hope to use this for all future models for NZ as we often have to wait for cars to be released, built and shipped before launching,” Bedford says.