Skoda's cheaper Epiq is the right idea, but it has to be a real car

How cheap does an electric car have to be before it stops being a luxury and becomes a normal purchase? Skoda seems to think the answer sits somewhere in the mid-€20,000s, and the new Epiq Easy 35 is its attempt to land there.

The facts are simple. The Easy 35 is the entry point to the Epiq range, with 116 PS (85 kW) and a 38.5 kWh LFP battery that, according to GoingElectric, is good for up to 325 km. In Germany it opens for orders at €25,900. For Spain, Motor.es only asks in its headline whether this will be the 25,000-euro Epiq there, so there is no confirmed Spanish price in what we have seen. In the Czech Republic the base car starts at 619,000 Kč including VAT, in Essence trim, per Autohled.

Cutting power was the easy part; cutting honestly is harder

We like the instinct. For years the electric-car conversation has been dominated by ever-bigger batteries and ever-bigger numbers, while the people who need a second car, or a first one, just want a monthly bill that makes sense. In our view, 116 PS is plenty for a small SUV that will spend its life in town and on the commute. Nobody buying this car is chasing a 0-100 km/h time.

The 325 km figure is the one to watch. It's a WLTP number, and real-world range will probably be lower, as it usually is. Whether that's enough depends on who you are. For a household with a driveway or a workplace charger, it looks more than adequate. For someone who wants one car to do everything, including holiday motorway runs, it's a compromise. Mein-Elektroauto points to exactly this trade-off: plenty of space, but a longer fast-charging stop. We'd add that a small LFP pack is a rational choice for cost and durability, but it makes charging speed matter more, not less.

The danger is a price-bait trim

Here is our real worry. Carmakers have a long habit of advertising a starting price that almost nobody buys, then steering customers toward the better-equipped version. If the Easy 35 is the car in the headline but the Epiq people actually take home costs several thousand euros more, the strategy will feel like a bait-and-switch, and the trust it buys will evaporate.

To avoid that, Skoda has to make the base car feel like a finished product. That means a sensible equipment list, the practicality the Epiq promises (475 liters of trunk space, per Sparneuwagen) and clear availability at dealers, not only in the configurator. It also means being straight about the Spanish price, since a question mark in a headline is not a number a buyer can sign.

Chinese rivals won't grade on a curve

Skoda is not short of interest in the Epiq. Eldiario reports 60,000 orders in Europe for the Epiq, about 1,500 of them in Spain, ahead of the 51,000 for the Cupra Raval and 50,000 for the Volkswagen ID. Polo, which are siblings in the same family of urban electric cars. It will be built in Navarra, which probably gives it the kind of European credentials that tariff-wary buyers like.

The sources we have don't say how those orders split between versions, so we can't tell how many are for the cheap Easy 35. We suspect they mostly reflect interest in the car as announced rather than in this specific trim. Chinese brands have built their European pitch on offering more equipment per euro, and we won't pretend to compare their prices number by number here. What we can say is that a 116 PS car with 325 km of range will be judged against whatever generous spec sheet sits next to it on the dealer's website. Skoda's argument has to be trust, practicality and a sensible, well-built package, not just a headline price.

Our verdict

Cutting the spec to reach the mid-€20,000s is the right move, and arguably overdue for the mainstream. Where the Easy 35 will win or lose is not on paper but in whether a buyer can walk in, order it for roughly the advertised price and feel they got a proper car. If Skoda delivers that, it will have found the sweet spot of the whole family. If the cheap version is hard to find, thin on equipment or priced differently from country to country, it will look like what we fear: a good headline attached to a different car. Our advice to buyers: ask for the final on-the-road price, check how the car charges, and only then decide whether this is cheap enough.