The seemingly endless left turns are very long. I approach the forest, the bend tightens and even now there are traces of Karoq in the snowdrifts, who flew there some time ago and got stuck in his belly. The broken track exposed ice and I slowed down as instructed by the instructor and applied the brakes gently to the spinning wheels. The rear of the Škoda got lighter, inertia started to slide around the front wheel, and I followed up with a quick counter and sharper acceleration. And in silence my electric motor began to drift.

The studs in the tires dug into the ice, throwing snowflakes off, and I came out with a decent powerslide down the short straight and into the next corner. This is very fun! And I never expected to experience driving nirvana in a modern electric car like this one. This is the sporty-electric Škoda Enyaq RS iV. Only now I realized what we could not see during normal asphalt testing. And also this electric car can go much better than we thought.

I was in Sweden on the frozen lake Stortjärnen and already for the tenth lap I enjoyed the fastest Enyaq on an artificial circuit milled in snow. There were 35 to 55 centimeters of ice under us, and experienced instructors assured us that this was enough. Did you know that you only need 10 centimeters of ice to drive a car on a frozen lake? However, the ability to swim is also an important driving skill here. It’s not an everyday routine, but one never knows. I certainly don’t want to fall into icy water. And today it’s still warm outside, because it’s only minus three. Other times it’s minus ten or even less.

Škoda chose this location to show us all the four-wheeler brands currently in action. And as I chase them here, I’m starting to feel like I’m getting the hang of it. However, Emil Lindholm, the reigning WRC2 world champion, brought me back to reality when he literally flew around the lake with me in the navigator’s seat at the new Fabia RS Rally2 competition. On the fastest track, he drives at 130, goes through all the turns with perfect precision and looks like he’s shopping. Scandinavia is the birthplace of the best rally drivers in the world. They go straight from strollers to amateur competitors.

And I have to keep practicing. There is also an internal combustion Skoda, but I have only one winner. I’m not an apostle of electromobility, but out of all the cars, the electric Enyaq RS iV suits me best. Thanks to its electric motor, it is the only four-wheel drive from Škoda that prefers the rear wheels and connects the front ones. It’s more fun and oversteer than all traditional models, based on Haldex with front wheel preference. At that point, you have to be rougher on the gas and enter corners at higher speeds to “rip” them with inertia. Driving characteristics and ability to drift differ according to engine power, weight and wheelbase.

But back to the Enyaq RS iV. With minimal danger on the ice court, I reset Sport mode for sharper throttle response and limited stabilization to ESC Sport. Unfortunately, a complete shutdown is not possible here. The Enyaq slows down a bit when hovering at high angles, but if you estimate correctly the maximum tolerable, it’s a lot of fun. For elegant oversteer skid, all you have to do is enter the turn under the gas and gently add to it. Plus, with instant torque, I don’t even fully accelerate so the powerful electric four-wheeler exits corners in efficient skid.

The basic lesson here is that you shouldn’t try to skid if you don’t know how to do it. You have to have everything ready, predict correctly when to add and engage fast counters. Sometimes even half a turn of the steering wheel in a fraction of a second. Once you can do it slowly, start speeding up and stretching each slide. If you like cars, you can do it naturally. Riding on frozen lakes is all about feel, fluidity and careful work of weight transfer. And you can use it even in snowy areas.

We started practicing it at dawn in the slalom, to get used to the car, the ice beneath us, and to learn how to coast by braking to the spinning wheels. After a while, I realized how easy it was to brake with my left foot. That is, in those moments when you can do it. Even our instructor and Lindholm said they only use their right foot for the gas. Here you drive the ATV primarily with the accelerator and you can turn without straining yourself with the steering wheel. However, working with the brakes is more complicated on an electric car, because compared to a normal car, you have to deal with recovery first. Wheel brakes are only engaged when the pedal is pressed harder.

I rode the longest ice circuit almost to the point of madness, maintaining consistency, but with my newfound love for drifting I tried to get as much experience as possible. When I go too fast in a corner and the heavy Enyaq comes out by inertia, I try to take advantage of it, lighten the rear, tighten the steering, turn the car the other way, then add it properly. It’s amazing how the studs in the tires instantly bite into the ice and come out of the turn. No, I’ve never laughed so sincerely in a Škoda electric car. I finally found the real driving pleasure in it.

But our trip to Sweden to learn about the Škoda ATV wasn’t just about drifting on a frozen lake. Emotionally, we are in the middle of nowhere, not far from the city of Östersund, and all around us are hundreds of kilometers of forest districts leading through a lonely winter landscape. In the morning, we arrived at the lake in a diesel Octavia Combi RS, as unfortunately Mladá Boleslav does not produce four-wheel petrol, and we drove back in the most powerful facelifted petrol Karoq.

After a whole day of driving at the limit, I got tired and let the stabilization go, as I had enough drift today and snowy areas can be treacherous. But a few kilometers later I had to slap my hand… No, I didn’t break anything. I just grabbed the button with the car skidding into a turn at an intersection, disconnected the electronics and powerslide onto the main road in the snow. There’s no one anywhere, just you and the car. You can’t say no to that.

It’s also different in the north than it is here. It’s snowing in the Czech Republic, within twenty four hours the first spreaders will come out and use salt to make slippery mud. And the assistance services and insurance companies have a harvest at the same time. But not in Sweden. Not only can you ride homologous studded tires there, as I do now, but there is always snow cover on perfectly leveled roads. And these shoes work like gods on him. You turn the steering wheel, the car turns. You hit the brakes, the car obediently stops. And when you drive right, you can drive dynamically.

The pinnacle of nirvana was driving me when I handed over our Karoq to a colleague from another newsroom behind the long winding and hilly forest district. Skoda shows us here that it’s not only in the Czech Republic that we don’t have the opportunity to get to know its cars in full. It also shows us that it’s surprisingly fun to ride if you get it into the right conditions. And it’s no surprise that interest in the Mladá Boleslav ATV is growing. After all, today you can find them in the electric Octavia, Superb, Karoq, Kodiaq and Enyaq iV.

The best-selling Skoda with 4×4 all-wheel drive is the Kodiaq. Of the more than 429,000 cars sold so far, more than 309,000 have four-wheel drive. That’s sixty percent. The biggest interest in Škoda cars with all-wheel drive is in Iceland, where more than 87 percent of customers bought it last year. The largest number of cars equipped in this way are sold in Germany. Last year, 27,215 ATVs from Mladá Boleslav found their owners there. Since 1999, when the automaker introduced the number one Octavia 4×4, a total of over 1.25 million units have been sold.