Subaru’s EV Future Includes Hybrids

Subaru will catch up to rivals in the push for EVs and hybrids over the next two years, according to Tomoaki Emori, the automaker’s senior vice president of corporate planning.

The product portfolio will get "strong hybrids and electric vehicles to the U.S. market by 2025, says Emori tells analysts during the automaker’s latest earnings call. For the U.S. especially, he says, "We will need to offer several models in our EV lineup, and we have shifted our weight toward that in our development.

Despite Toyota’s 20% stake in Subaru, the niche maker of all-wheel-drive vehicles is still relatively small on the global automotive stage with global sales of just 735,000 in 2022. Speaking at the recent Chicago Auto Show, Subaru of America CEO Tom Doll said timing on switching to EVs is key, "because for a company the size of ours, it is a bet-the-company kind of transformation"

The Japanese automaker has been resetting itself the past two years, realigning for a shift to EVs starting with the Solterra, which has been jointly developed with Toyota.

The Solterra has standard all-wheel-drive with an estimated driving range between 222 and 228 miles (357 to 367 km) a bit low by today’s standards for a battery-electric passenger car and costs about $46,000, which is roughly the average transaction price of a new U.S. vehicle today. Toyota’s version of the EV is the Toyota bZ4X.

The Solterra is off to a slightly rocky start with the company announcing it is recalling the EV for a second time over the same issue: 1,182 units recalled over a faulty wheel-hub bolt issue that plagued the company's first all-electric vehicle last year.

The vehicles were repaired at two port locations prior to being delivered to customers. Subaru says it discovered the third-party contractor didn’t properly complete the repair procedure, resulting in the potential for significantly under-torqued bolts. The company suspended production for a time last year while engineers investigated the bolt problem, then resumed in October.

Subaru executives say it wants electrified vehicles to account for 40% of its global sales by 2030, which is equal to the goal of the Biden Admin. To facilitate the transition, the company has built a new R&D center at its main factory in Gunma Prefecture, Japan, and created an engineering manufacturing division just for EVs.

Details of Subaru’s product cadence have not been disclosed yet. But a hybrid version, possibly a plug-in hybrid version of the Forester, is widely expected for the 2025 model year. And Subaru execs say the new Crosstrek, unveiled in Chicago, will not be getting a hybrid or PHEV drivetrain. Why? To steer customers to the Solterra. The Solterra and new Crosstrek are roughly the same size.