- Three new all-electric SUVs—that’s all we know about them, sorry—will join the Solterra in Subaru’s lineup by 2026.
- Those SUVS will help the company sell 200,000 EVs in 2026, according to Subaru executive vice president Atsushi Osaki.
- Toyota builds Subaru’s only EV, the Solterra, right now, but that will change. Subaru plans to build up to 400,000 EVs a year by 2028.
There will soon be three more Subaru electric vehicles. And more “Subaru” Subaru EVs.
Subaru’s only current EV is the Solterra (pictured above), a decent but not spectacular EV that was a bit hampered by a rocky introduction to the market. Like Toyota, which co-developed the Solterra (and the similar Toyota bZ4x) with Subaru and is starting to get more serious about plug-in models, Subaru isn’t letting this slow start dampen its EV plans too much. Late last week, Subaru announced that three new all-electric SUVs are coming by 2026, along with an updated plan to build up to 400,000 EVs a year.
The expanded EV plans were announced by Subaru director and executive vice president Atsushi Osaki during a call with reporters about the company’s fiscal year 2023 results. While we’d all like to know more about these future electric SUVs, Osaki declined to give any clues.
“I would like to discuss these new models in more detail at another time,” he said, according to a transcript of the call.
200,000 Subaru EV Sales in 2026
Subaru built 874,000 vehicles in fiscal year 2023 and expects to produce over a million in fiscal 2024. The company isn’t predicting specific production or sales numbers beyond that, although Osaki did say that Subaru plans to sell 200,000 EVs globally in 2026.
That’s a decent number considering the company’s EV fate is tied, for now at least, with Toyota. The Subaru/Toyota partnership will not end with the Solterra/bZ4x. Osaki said the three future Subaru EVs will also use batteries from the Toyota alliance. Toyota builds the Solterra for Subaru alongside the bZ4x at Toyota’s Motomachi plant. Looking forward, though, Subaru is ready to forge its own destiny when it comes to EV production.
Last year, Subaru announced a Strategic Reorganization of Domestic Production regarding green vehicles. First, Subaru said it will build more transmissions for Subaru models that use Toyota’s hybrid system. Second, Subaru is to start production of its own all-electric models at both its Yajima plant (starting around 2025) and Oizumi plant (2027 or later).
Last week, Osaki confirmed that Subaru will indeed start building EVs at Yajima in 2025 but at twice that original rate. While Subaru originally intended to build the capacity to produce up to 100,000 EVs a year at Yajima, Osaki said that number is now 200,000. Along with the original 200,000 estimated capacity for Oizumi, that means Subaru will be able to make up to 400,000 EVs a year at these plants starting in 2028.
While the Japan-based production of these future EVs is likely to mean they will not qualify for tax incentives here in the U.S., Osaki said the production reorganizations will give the automaker the flexibility to produce EVs, hybrids, and traditional internal-combustion vehicles in the amounts that market and regulators demand.
“At the same time, it is also important to be able to quickly shift to ‘expansion’ when we have a clearer view of future prospects,” he said.
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Contributing Editor
Sebastian Blanco has been writing about electric vehicles, hybrids, and hydrogen cars since 2006. His articles and car reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Automotive News, Reuters, SAE, Autoblog, InsideEVs, Trucks.com, Car Talk, and other outlets. His first green-car media event was the launch of the Tesla Roadster, and since then he has been tracking the shift away from gasoline-powered vehicles and discovering the new technology’s importance not just for the auto industry, but for the world as a whole. Throw in the recent shift to autonomous vehicles, and there are more interesting changes happening now than most people can wrap their heads around. You can find him on Twitter or, on good days, behind the wheel of a new EV.
Source: Motor - aranddriver.com
