Head office acknowledgement of New Zealand being a market of exceptional opportunity for electric vehicles likely positions us as a top candidate for Skoda's first battery-powered model.

So says the brand's local boss, who reckons there's strong chance the Enyaq, a just-revealed coupe-styled SUV based on parent Volkswagen's MEB electric platform, could be on sale locally within the next two years.

Rodney Gillard is pinning faith in Skoda coming good on its already expressed recognition that NZ is deserving of special attention.

Supplied The Skoda Vision iV is powered by a pair of electric motors and has a claimed range of 500km.

The factory's view, he says, results from it heeding compelling argument put by the Kiwi agent last year and is also a core of a 'Vision 2025' national strategy that will be discussed with the factory next week.

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"We're sitting down and working through a growth plan with Skoda Auto. We are being tabled as a 'pilot country' and that is being negotiated right now. Electric is our vision and it is also Skoda Auto's vision for us; they see a real opportunity for electric in this country. Nothing has been confirmed, but that is where we are heading.

Supplied All Skoda has revealed of the Enyaq so far is the badge.

"If I could pluck something out of the air, my wish list would be to have this (Enyaq) in 2021, but we will have to wait and see."

The ball started rolling last November, when Skoda NZ gave presentation in Prague explaining the argument for how the EV market is unpacking here and what an EV presence would do for the Skoda brand. Skoda has yet to fully sign-off at board level, but Gillard is confident.

"The appetite for electric in NZ is strong," he says. "And it will change the face of Skoda.

"They (the factory) are very keen to help us achieve that. They are definitely in partnership with us to get electric."

First fruit of that planning is already sorted, with plug-in hybrid versions of the just-refreshed Superb and the new-generation Octavia cited for release here, both being precluded by the new Kamiq crossover which also reportedly will spawn an electrified edition.

Supplied The Vision iV has a futuristic interior that may not make it into the production Enyaq.

Enyaq – whose name derives from the Irish woman's name Enya but with Skoda flavouring (the letter Q to tie to its other SUVs - Kodiaq, Karoq and the NZ-bound Kamiq – and the 'E' is also referencing electromobility) – is about the same size as the Superb sedan and the Kodiaq and will sit in those cars' price band.

Only the new badge has been shown off, but Skoda has confirmed it derives from, and closely resembles, the Vision iV concept revealed at last year's Geneva motor show.

The concept was powered by twin electric motors to give combined power of 225kW and featured a 83-kWh lithium ion battery pack to give a range of 500km as measured on the WLTP emissions cycle.

Enyaq goes on sale in Europe at the end of the year and kicks off a new stage of an electrification plan that will ultimately deliver five full-electric and five hybrid models on sale by the end of 2022. It expects full-electric and plug-in hybrids to account for 25 percent of its volume by 2025.

Skoda plans to launch a more conventionally styled electric SUV based on the MEB platform soon after the Enyaq. It will be followed by a more affordable electric car underpinned by VW Group's new small EV architecture. There's no clarity, yet, about the potential of those models for NZ.

Supplied We wouldn't expect to see the cool 'suicide' doors make it into the Enyaq.

Skoda will build the Enyaq at its plant in Mlada Boleslav, Czech Republic, on the same production line as the Octavia.

The production strategy differs from that of VW Group brands Seat and Audi, which will make their first MEB cars at VW's lead EV facility in Zwickau, Germany, alongside the VW ID3. All those models are close relations at a technical level.

The first Seat MEB car, the El Born – also chasing NZ residency, but possibly not arriving until after ID3 and Enyaq have settled in - is expected to be revealed in production form at the Geneva auto show on March 3.

Enyaq will not debut in Geneva show but will instead be revealed later this year, Skoda says.

National distribution rights for all VW Group brands are held by the Giltrap Group under its European Motor Distributors' banner, and Gillard says the infrastructure established for the first of the VW family's electrics, Audi's e-tron models, is uniform to that required by the family's other marques.

"We are fully, fully ready to go."