Skoda sealed the charge port, then drove a Peaq 936 km

Before Marek Jež and Jakub Krs left Mladá Boleslav at noon on 25 August, someone sealed the Peaq's charge-port flap. The sticker was the entire technical modification. No aero discs, no stripped seats, no special prototype. Just a production Škoda Peaq 90, a 91 kWh pack with 86 kWh usable, a 210 kW rear motor, 19-inch wheels and the factory low-rolling-resistance tyres, plus a piece of tape that said nobody was plugging this thing in until the North Sea.

TÜV SÜD watched. The Czech Book of Records watched. On Wednesday afternoon in Zandvoort the display and the officials agreed on 936 kilometres and 9.2 kWh/100 km. That is 289 km, almost 45 percent, beyond the Peaq 90's 647 km WLTP figure. Škoda's own video then did what manufacturer videos do: two tired engineers on a beach, grinning at a number their families will never see on a school run.

Krs is the Peaq's chief battery officer. Jež is the programme's project leader. They are not influencers hired for a stunt. They are also not a typical seven-seat household. "Our goal was to demonstrate the capabilities of the technology at the very limit of its potential," Krs said on Škoda's storyboard. "To achieve the maximum possible range, we carefully selected the most suitable route and, naturally, an appropriate driving style." Jež was blunter: "An average user would probably never drive the car this way. Instead, they would make full use of the Peaq's dynamic performance, onboard infotainment and comfort features."

On camera, the optimism was smaller than the press release. One set a personal target somewhere north of 800 km. Krs was the more bullish, reckoning 900 might be reachable. Amsterdam, about 850 km away, would already have counted as a win. They used secondary roads, kept speed as constant as three countries of traffic lights allowed, and folded the second and third rows so they could rest in the car. At a quarter of the battery they had 231 km behind them and started talking about 920. At 470 km they still had 49 percent. Late in the run they had "no range, no SOC" on the display and five kilometres of beach road left. "But the car is driving. It's amazing."

Autoevolution's Mircea Panait put the catch in one sentence: this was hypermiling. Smooth speed, light regen, no hard launches, weather that stayed dry. Jež later admitted the meteorology was part of the result. "In rain and on wet roads, we would never have achieved such a result." City traffic in the Netherlands, with intersections and cyclists, "literally drains the battery's energy," the crew reported, the opposite of the night cruise across Germany. They still had enough left at Amersfoort to skip Amsterdam and add about 50 km to the sea.

Usable energy on the Peaq 90 is 86 kWh. Divide that by 9.2 kWh/100 km and you get a distance in the same neighbourhood as 936 km. The arithmetic is consistent. It is also the arithmetic of a car treated as a rolling laboratory. WLTP already tries to represent mixed driving; Škoda's homologated 647 km is the figure a buyer can argue with a dealer. The record run beat it because the drivers refused the mix.

The hardware underneath is not a trick. Drag coefficient 0.249 on a 4.87-metre, three-row SUV is a serious aero number. Rear-wheel drive and 19-inch wheels are the efficient spec, not the 90x dual-motor. DC charging on this battery is quoted at 199 kW, 10 to 80 percent in 28 minutes — a separate conversation the record did not test, because the flap stayed sealed for 20 hours of moving. Autoweek's Natalie Neff, writing for a US audience that will not get the car, called the 402-mile WLTP rating the more interesting figure: few American seven-seaters offer that, and those that do cost more. A Peaq 90, she wrote, starts around the equivalent of $68,000.

In the Czech Republic, autoevolution reported more than 10,000 orders and a Peaq 60 from 1,150,000 korunas. That is the model people will actually commute in, with the smaller 63 kWh pack, not the hypermiled 90. Confusing the beach number with the showroom number is how range records become customer complaints two winters later.

Škoda wanted a clean claim: longest distance on one charge for a seven-seat electric SUV, plus a Czech record for any EV on a single charge. The sealed flap was how they proved nobody topped it up at a quiet Ionity. Both drivers said the car beat the 9.6 kWh/100 km they had hoped for, with stretches below 9. "Don't be afraid about the range of electric cars," one of them said into the official microphone, which is a fair message if you keep the driving style in the shot.

A family Peaq with three rows up, climate on, motorway speed and wet tarmac will not do 936 km. It might do something closer to the 647 km Škoda already printed, or less. The useful residue of the run is narrower and better: a stock 86 kWh pack, ordinary tyres and a 0.249 body can be sipped down to about 9 kWh/100 km if two engineers are willing to treat Germany as a glide. That is a data point. It is not a holiday plan.