Does Skoda support Israel?

ŠKODA AUTO a.s. and the Israeli importer Champion Motors established a jointly owned company, ŠKODA AUTO DigiLab Israel Ltd, based in Tel Aviv and operational from January 2018, to identify and back Israeli start-up technologies for mobility services and vehicle efficiency. Unlike ordinary car sales in Israel, this is Škoda's own corporate investment vehicle: the carmaker is a shareholder in an Israeli-registered company, with Champion Motors as its local partner.

Škoda presented the first results of its Israeli programme: DigiLab Israel was evaluating a portfolio of more than ten Israeli technology companies and had four in active assessment — Guardian (radar child-seat and occupant detection), XM Cyber (vehicle-network cybersecurity), Anagog (smartphone-sensor behaviour analytics and parking) and Otonomo (connected-car data platform). Škoda's later reporting described collaboration with more than a dozen Israeli firms, including Chakratec and UVeye.

Israel's Ministry of Defense ran a leasing tender for about 10,000 cars for the IDF's permanent/non-commissioned staff, a four-year lease with rollout through 2028; Calcalist (2025-02-23) and Kipa reported the fleet-supply-and-management award went to leasing companies Aldan (85%) and Peri (15%, also part of the Allied Group). Three of the four winning car models were Škoda-brand — the Fabia, Scala and Kamiq — sold in Israel exclusively by Champion Motors, Škoda's Israeli importer (itself part of Allied, and not a ŠKODA AUTO subsidiary); the fourth model, Kia Stonic, is imported by Talcar, and an Opel Frontera was added for a large-family category. The tender replaced an outgoing fleet of Seat Ibiza, Hyundai i20 and Kia Rio, and disqualified Chinese entrants (Chery, BYD) over what the Ministry called failure to meet security requirements. This was a commercial sale carried out by Champion Motors as Škoda's importer supplying vehicles into a government tender — not a transaction by ŠKODA AUTO a.s. itself. Who Profits' Volkswagen Group profile separately states, without naming Škoda or citing a source, that in a 10,000-vehicle leasing tender for military personnel 'three of four models belong to the Volkswagen Group'; this record independently identifies those three models as Škoda-brand via direct Israeli press coverage of the tender.