Škoda's £24,950 Epiq matches its petrol twin on price. You just cannot buy that one yet

Start with the number Škoda wants you to see: £24,950. That is the Epiq 40 in SE L trim, the brand's smallest and cheapest electric car, and it lands within a rounding error of the petrol Kamiq it sits beside in the showroom. Price parity between an EV and its combustion equivalent is the thing the industry has been promising for a decade. Škoda has done it.

Now the catch, and it matters if you are shopping this autumn rather than next. The 37 kWh Epiq 40 does not reach the UK until January 2027. Order today and you get the 52 kWh Epiq 55, which starts just under £27,700 in SE L and tips past £30,000 in Edition trim. The 55 does qualify for the UK's £1,500 electric car grant, bringing SE L down to about £26,200 — still £1,250 above the headline.

The Epiq 55 runs a 52 kWh usable NMC pack, 211 PS through the front wheels, 0–62 mph in 7.1 seconds and an official 272 miles. DC charging peaks at 105 kW, good for 10–80 per cent in a shade under 25 minutes. The entry 40 drops to 135 PS, roughly 190 miles and a 90 kW ceiling.

It is the first Škoda on MEB+ and, unlike the rear-driven Elroq and Enyaq above it, the Epiq drives its front axle. At 4.17 metres it is genuinely small, though the upright shape and chunky cladding do a reasonable job of disguising that. It is also the first production car in Škoda's new Modern Solid design language, with the gloss-black tech-deck nose and T-shaped lighting that will spread across the range.

Auto Express tested the 55 with a heavy motorway bias and saw 4.7 miles per kWh, which works out at almost 245 miles on a charge — unusually close to the official claim for a car in this class. The magazine's verdict called it "excellent in almost every way a small SUV should be", while noting a firmer ride than the larger Elroq and Enyaq, audible wind and road noise, hard black plastics, and no proper physical climate controls beyond temperature.

Every small EV on sale right now claims to have solved packaging. The Epiq actually has the figure to prove it: 475 litres under the parcel shelf, 1,344 with the seats down. That is five litres more than the Elroq and fifteen more than a Kia EV3, both of which are bigger cars. Auto Social UK's Tish, driving the car in Austria, climbed into the boot on camera because she could not think of another way to convey the scale of it.

"This car's superpower is space," she said, pointing out that the only rivals in the same territory are the Epiq's own platform siblings — the VW ID. Polo and Cupra Raval. The Volkswagen Group has engineered this class well; it has just engineered it three times over.

Her broader read was that the Epiq's virtue is ordinariness. It drives like a small Škoda SUV that happens to be electric, with light low-speed steering, good visibility, a B mode that delivers proper one-pedal driving, and enough weight building up at speed that it never feels nervous. If you are wary of switching to electric, she reckoned, this is a low-drama place to start. The one reservation on the road: get enthusiastic out of a tight junction and the front tyres let you know 211 PS is a lot for one driven axle.

The competitive set has moved fast. Hyundai's Inster, the Renault 4, Kia's EV2, the Citroën ë-C3 and the Geely EX2 have all arrived making the same argument about small electric cars being useful rather than compromised. On equipment, the Kia and the Renault are better provisioned as standard, and the cheapest Epiq is noticeably lean — built-in navigation, wireless phone charging, heated seats and heated wheel all live in the pricier Edition, along with dual-zone climate, keyless entry, front parking sensors and the reversing camera.

On rear space, Tish found the Epiq roomier than the Kia EV2 and slightly better than a petrol Kamiq, with three ISOFIX points in a car this size, but well short of the Geely EX2, which she rates as the class leader back there. There is a pull-down armrest and door storage, which puts it ahead of a Jeep Avenger or Fiat 600e on that specific count.

And then there are the 3D-printed accessories. Škoda will let you download and print your own cabin trinkets, an idea Tish met with visible ambivalence — they do cheapen the cabin, she said, even if the customisation is a nice thought. It is a strange flourish in a car whose entire case rests on being sensible.

The Epiq is not the bargain of the century at the price you can actually order it, and it is not the best-equipped thing in the segment. What it is, on the evidence of the people who have now driven it, is the small electric SUV that behaves most like a normal car and swallows the most luggage. For a lot of households that is the whole list.