New Skoda Epiq baby electric SUV to get £22k price point: Simply Clever or epic fail?

Get ready, as Skoda has given us our first look at its new baby electric SUV that’s proposed to start from as little as €25,000 (£22,000) when it goes on sale next year.

Badged the ‘Skoda Epiq’, this model intends to live up to its promising name not only with a bargain starting price, but also unrivalled levels of practicality and a range of up to 250 miles.

Excited yet? Well, the Skoda Epiq Concept gives us our first glimpse of what we can expect from the production car. The Czech brand’s ‘Modern Solid’ design philosophy is on full display here, with the concept adopting a brutish upright stance, slim boomerang-shaped headlights and Skoda’s trademark indented grille – which, surprisingly, unlike on the larger Skoda Enyaq, isn’t illuminated. This is instead affectionately referred to by the team at Skoda as the ‘Tech Deck’, housing all the car’s safety and driver assistance sensors.

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Yet, despite the Epiq’s modern design language, it’s easy to draw comparisons with Skoda’s once-popular, now-discontinued baby SUV, the Skoda Yeti. Measuring just 4,100mm long, the Epiq is only marginally shorter than its abominably-named petrol predecessor, however, it is set to offer as much as 490 litres of boot space, in comparison to the Yeti’s 410 litres.

More similarities can be found inside, with a squared-off dashboard and plenty of the brand’s now-trademarked ‘Simply Clever’ features. These include plenty of roomy nooks to store away all of your bits and pieces, including deep door bins and a floating centre console with wireless charging for your phone. We expect the production car will boast all the usual Skoda features, like a parking ticket holder and an umbrella in the door, too.

It’s not all old, though; the Epiq looks to use Skoda’s latest infotainment setup, as found in the aforementioned Enyaq. This comprises a glossy centre touchscreen, underlined by a row of physical toggle switches and complemented by a small digital instrument cluster behind the steering wheel.

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The Skoda Epiq will sit on Volkswagen Group’s new MEB Small platform; we’ve spoken about this a lot here on DrivingElectric, with this tech also set to underpin the forthcoming Volkswagen ID.2 and Cupra Raval.

Volkswagen says the ID.2 will be offered with both 38kWh and 52kWh battery sizes, with the latter getting a beefy 223bhp electric motor and offering a maximum range of 280 miles. That said, the Skoda’s legs won’t be quite as long as its VW counterpart, with Skoda projecting a range of around 250 miles – no doubt hampered in part by the Epiq’s boxy silhouette. Still, 125kW DC rapid charging should top-up the battery from 10-80% in around 20 minutes.

As said, the Skoda Epiq will go on sale next year, shortly after a full official reveal of the production car, also in 2025. A starting price of around £22,000 would put it right in competition with the newly-revealed Citroen e-C3, although Skoda is also working on an even cheaper hatchback model, which could even rival the £15,000 Dacia Spring when it makes a splash in the near future.