Toyota and Subaru Sitting in a Tree, M-A-K-I-N-G (3 New EV SUVs)
Subaru claims its done its due diligence and Toyota is the best partner for the next three electric vehicles.
Toyota and Subaru appear to be well on the way to becoming a PB & J-like cliched combination, after a multi-generational collaboration on the BRZ/86 rear-wheel-drive sports car and the Subaru Solterra/Toyota bZ4X electric SUVs. In a recent presentation discussing the company’s performance over the last fiscal year, the company revealed that it’s decided who it will build its next three electric vehicles with: Toyota. Of course. The real surprise would have been if Subaru announced its team up with any other automaker, or try to go it alone.
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By the end of 2026, Subaru claims, it’ll have four EV SUV models on offer. The Solterra is already here, so that leaves three more. One will be built at the Subaru factory in Yajima, and another will be built at a Toyota factory in the U.S. Combine that with info from Toyota itself—that it will build a three-row BEV SUV in Kentucky starting in 2025—and we have a good guess about what one of the Subaru variants will be. Despite the hesitation about EVs given a slowing of demand recently, the three-row SUV market is an important one and Kia has a big head start with the well-received EV9 three-row.
The third one? It looks smaller, and it may or may not be intended for our market. Subaru’s materials don’t have any intel about this model. The company does say that it will “have a lineup of battery EVs produced in the United States,” but that statement may or may not apply to the “by the end of 2026” wave of EVs.
Joint development and production makes a lot of sense for Subaru, in terms of minimizing investment in less-profitable and (at the moment) apparently risky business of building and selling EVs. Toyota, too, which was able to bring the low-volume Supra to market with BMW—it said it wouldn’t have even tried to do so without a partner—and the BRZ/86 experiment was successful enough to spawn a second generation of affordable sports coupes. Toyota has U.S. factory capacity, as well, while Subaru is perennially production-constrained at its U.S. factory in Indiana.
We do hope Subaru (and Toyota) learn a few lessons from the bZ4X/Solterra experiment, namely that slow and somewhat unpredictable fast-charging really hobbled the experience of what is otherwise a solid EV. A more competitive charging architecture would go a long way to drawing customers to EVs under the Subaru and Toyota brands, both of which engender strong brand loyalty and perceptions.
Like a lot of the other staffers here, Alex Kierstein took the hard way to get to car writing. Although he always loved cars, he wasn’t sure a career in automotive media could possibly pan out. So, after an undergraduate degree in English at the University of Washington, he headed to law school. To be clear, it sucked. After a lot of false starts, and with little else to lose, he got a job at Turn 10 Studios supporting the Forza 4 and Forza Horizon 1 launches. The friendships made there led to a job at a major automotive publication in Michigan, and after a few years to MotorTrend. He lives in the Seattle area with a small but scruffy fleet of great vehicles, including a V-8 4Runner and a C5 Corvette, and he also dabbles in scruffy vintage watches and film cameras.
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