Skoda is a brand that’s on the up in the UK fleet market, having recorded a true fleet market share of 4.7% in 2024, which contributed to a record 4% share of the overall UK car market. You might expect that fleet success to have been down to the Business Car Award-winning Enyaq EV. However, when we ask Skoda UK head of fleet sales Nick O’Neill about it, the first thing he chooses to highlight is the brand’s plug-in hybrids.

He says: “We had a brand new next-generation Superb last year, along with the plug-in hybrid variant, which has gone down really well, and then we had the facelifted Octavia.

“But actually, more important for us was the new Kodiaq, [which is] a really important car for us in fleet – I don’t have the exact numbers to hand, but I think I’m selling two to one hybrid to ICE, and honestly, my biggest challenge with the Kodiaq plug-in hybrid at the moment is I can’t get enough production of it, because it’s extremely popular across Europe. So those three cars, two brand new models, really made a big difference.”

According to O’Neill, Skoda has done a lot of work to advocate plug-in hybrids among company car drivers and fleet managers.

He says: “I think having the plug-in hybrid took Kodiaq from being a kind of PCH car, and maybe a bit of rental, really into the corporate SME world, because the BIK on it last year was 5%. So that car, if people weren’t willing to make the transition into an Enyaq, was a really important stepping stone. 

“We’d had the Octavia plug-in hybrid prior to that, and a lot of our customers would like us to bring that back, and that is an ongoing conversation with the factory.”

Plug-in hybrid BIK rates are set to rise sharply within the next few years, but O’Neill tells us he is yet to see a negative impact from this. He says: “Our lead times are quite long on the [Kodiaq] because it’s extremely popular. We’ve slowed our order rate down, but that was a tactical decision where we weren’t putting as much money into the market. 

“We are being asked questions by leasing companies, and I do think in the next year or two we will see a slowing of that demand. But in the short term, so far this year, I’ve not seen it.”

Expanded EV range

Of course, full EVs do have a significant role to play for Skoda in fleet, both last year and looking ahead. O’Neill identifies the introduction of the new Enyaq 85 variant as significant in 2024, saying: “That gave us more range, better spec, really competitive pricing, and it really took the Enyaq from being a good EV to a great EV in my opinion.”

In 2025, the major addition to Skoda’s range has been the smaller Elroq EV (pictured top), which O’Neill says allows the brand to target different markets to those which favour the Enyaq. He says: “Enyaq sits in a space where it is competing with premium, you know, stuff like the [Tesla] Model 3, Model Y, {Audi] Q4 E-Tron – there’s a lot of competition in that space, and honestly Enyaq has performed really strongly. 

“What Elroq has given us is a product that does something a little bit different. So, it won’t surprise you to find out that in salary sacrifice, it has been extremely popular so far, and [with] corporates and SMEs, particularly in the user chooser space, it’s going really well, less of a kind of job-need type car. 

“We’re doing some other business on it, but primarily where we are having real success is in corporate, SME and salary sacrifice.

“We’re tending to find that the Enyaq and the Enyaq Coupe will sit in slightly more of the executive bands in the company car user chooser space, whereas we’re finding the Elroq fits nicely into some of those sort of lower-level company car bands.”

O’Neill is currently in his second stint with Skoda, which started in 2022, having previously worked for the brand between 2015 and 2020, as part of a 23-year career overall with Volkswagen Group.

He recently saw his job title returned to head of fleet sales, having previously been head of direct sales, which meant he also had responsibility for Skoda’s EV sales, which were being done on an agency basis.

He explains: “The VW Group brands have decided to pause that and go back to a wholesale model on battery electrics. 

“We still are an agency sales business in fleet. We do a little bit of outright and direct stuff, but probably 80% of the business we do is agency, and that’s why they kind of put the retail bit into the role. 

“The important point here is I’m now 100% dedicated to fleet. And actually really delighted about it as well.”

SME focus

Aside from new product, O’Neill is also hoping to grow Skoda’s fleet business via a focus on the SME market. He says: “We have 25 Skoda business centres around the UK, geographically broadly aligned to where the biggest business hubs are, and every one of those has a local business development manager. Someone dedicated in that centre, who’s there to service the local businesses and clearly SMEs. 

“We’ve just done loads of business briefings for our business development managers on how taxation works for SMEs and the taxation benefits of running company cars, and EVs and hybrids and all of that kind of stuff. Now, we’re not PWC tax advisors, but we’re giving our local guys the tools to be able to help those small local businesses develop a relationship with the brand and with that local retailer. 

“A lot of people focus on the big names, the big corporates, but we think we can do both. A lot of our head office teams focus on the big corporates, so we really want to advocate and push out and talk about the great service our local fleet centres can give those SMEs.”

Something that has long been a strength for Skoda is blue light fleet business, and O’Neill explains that this remains the case.

He says: “We‘ve been able to support police, ambulance and fire and rescue services with kind of bespoke conversions, because we have a team within our overall group structure and they support Skoda in managing what we call direct sales. 

“They’re doing usually with government and agencies a lot of blue light stuff, and they’ve got relationships with converters, so we effectively offer a one-stop shop to government agencies, where we will say we can appoint the converter, we can help you with the design of the conversion, we can do all of the billing, and obviously we can provide delivery services and then ongoing aftersales service with the network that we’ve got. 

“Skoda is the most successful in the group at doing that, but having that kind of infrastructure and support team behind us really allows us to deliver a kind of class-leading service. It’s close to a thousand units a year we’re doing in that space.”

Between the new products and SME business drive, O’Neill is optimistic about Skoda recording further fleet market growth in 2025. He says: “Last year, because we were introducing so much product, and a lot of it was off ordering for such a long time, we actually didn’t have the greatest H1 in sales terms. “If you went back and looked at the sales figures, you’d say actually the volume in the second half of the year was bigger for us. That’s an indication of what’s happening this year, because that has carried on. 

“I’m expecting us to grow at least 10% year-on-year this year in fleet. We did about 24-and-a-half thousand last year, I expect us to do 27k+ [in 2025].”