Škoda Opened Epiq Orders at €27,900. The €25,900 Version Lands Next Month.

Škoda opened orders for the Epiq 40 on 17 September 2026. It starts at €27,900, and it is not the cheap one — an Epiq 35 arrives in October at €25,900.

What €27,900 buys

The Essence includes LED headlights, Climatronic and a 13-inch infotainment screen as standard. The Selection adds the Technik and Komfort packages and a Loft Grey interior. Both use lithium-iron-phosphate cells, which is the chemistry that makes the price work: cheaper per kWh than nickel-based cells, more tolerant of being charged to 100% every night, and less energy-dense — which is why the battery is 38.5 kWh and the range is 310 km rather than 500.

The number that matters is the one in October

€25,900 for the Epiq 35 is the figure to hold onto. The sub-€25,000 electric car from a volume European brand has been promised for years and has mostly arrived as a press release. This is €900 above that line, from Volkswagen Group, orderable rather than announced.

Twenty-three minutes from 10 to 80% is also worth noting, because it is the detail budget EVs usually lose on. A small battery refills quickly in absolute terms even at modest power, and on a 310 km car the charging stop is what decides whether a longer trip is tolerable.

Why this matters to a European Tesla buyer

Not because the Epiq competes with a Model 3 or Model Y — it does not. It is smaller, slower, shorter-legged and roughly half the price. It competes for the buyer who was going to stretch.

That is the pressure Tesla has not had to answer in Europe. Tesla's cheapest car here sits far above this, and the gap between €25,900 and a Model 3 is large enough to buy several years of charging. Every credible car at this price narrows the pool of people who conclude that an EV means a Tesla, which is the same dynamic visible in Czech registration data, where the Model Y leads while the market underneath it fills in.

It also lands while BMW's iX3 is taking six-figure European order books at the other end of the market and Chinese brands keep arriving early. Tesla's European position is being compressed from both directions at once — by premium platforms above and by genuinely cheap ones below — and the Epiq is the clearest example yet of the second.

The caution is the usual one for a launch price. €27,900 is the order-book figure for a specific trim, German prices do not transfer to other markets, and the €25,900 car is not orderable yet. What has actually happened is that the Epiq went from a name to a price list. That is more than most sub-€30,000 EVs manage.