Skoda pushes back the launch of its electric estate
The current Skoda CEO and former VW sales board member Zellmer spoke to British magazine Autocar about the carmaker’s plans. “To be totally honest, with the slowdown of the transformation into battery-electric vehicles, we’re revisiting that [timeline],” Zellmer said. “We’re checking the sequence of those cars.”
The plan announced in April 2023 was as follows: The Elroq compact SUV would be presented in 2024 (which it was this week), revised versions of the Enyaq iV and Enyaq iV Coupé as well as the small electric car with a base price of around 25,000 euros – i.e. the Skoda Epiq – were planned for 2025, followed in 2026 by a “spacious” electric estate and the seven-seater electric SUV based on the Vision 7S show car.
As Zellmer has now announced, the order of the latter two models has changed – because the electric estate has been pushed back, while the large electric SUV will probably remain in the planning for 2026. “The cadence now is we’ve had the Enyaq Coupé, the Elroq, the next one is the Epiq, and the next one down the line will be the SUV, the 7S you’ve seen the concept car of. After that – it could be 2027, 2028 – we’re aiming for an Octavia estate,” the Skoda CEO told Autocar.
However, Zellmer’s argument is not entirely logical in one respect. In the interview, he also described the lack of variety in body shapes as an obstacle to electric car sales, but he is the one delaying the estate in favour of the seven-seater SUV. “I’ve always said people always buy cars for the least probable cause they need them for,” Zellmer said. “So they buy a combi [estate] because they were at one point in time at Ikea, they had to put this huge box of a wardrobe in the car, so now they need a combi again.”
These ‘habits’ stand in the way of a rational decision and are something he also sees when it comes to range. “[Like] with range anxiety, this is totally emotional – it’s not rational. Who exceeds a range of 350 miles on a regular basis? And even if you do, you do one charging stop in between, get the car down to 30%, charge it back to 60%, it takes you 15 or less minutes and off you go. It’s not a problem,” explained the Skoda CEO. “It’s changing the habits, but people still find it difficult to change their behaviour towards battery-electric vehicles so we need to give people time to be ready for that, and this is why we offer alternatives.”
According to Zellmer, the delay in the electric estate also has consequences for Skoda’s combustion engine portfolio, specifically for the Fabia small car, the Kamiq crossover and the Scala hatchback model: “Originally, we said that we were going to phase out the Fabia, Kamiq and the Scala by 2027, but we have now green-lighted those cars to stay with us until the end of the decade.”
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