Subaru is still planning to bring three electric vehicles (EVs) to the United States by 2026. But they won’t be purpose-built Subaru products. They’ll share their bones with Toyota EVs.
Industry publication Automotive News reports that the move is a form of risk-sharing “in an electric vehicle market that is cooling off but still requires massive investment in new technology.”
Subaru sells one electric vehicle today: the relatively slow-selling Solterra. It is a close cousin to the Toyota bZ4X.
Subaru is unique among Japanese automakers. It doesn’t attempt to sell a full line of products. Instead, the brand specializes in off-road-oriented SUVs with a quirky Patagonia-wearing vibe. It sells a few cars that don’t fit that theme – the sporty BRZ and Impreza compact commuter come to mind. But the bulk of its sales come from its Outback, Forester, and Crosstrek SUVs, which all share one common platform.
So, when Subaru announced plans to develop three EVs, observers naturally assumed they would replace the three workhorses.
That may still happen. However, there would be a lot of overlap with three Toyota SUVs, which is not true of the brand’s big three today.
CEO Atsushi Osaki told reporters Monday that the EV market was proving volatile and “there is a huge risk for us to go it alone in this field. We have held talks with Toyota and have agreed that it is better to reduce risks through joint development.”
Toyota owns 20% of Subaru.
The smaller company still hopes to design its own EVs, says Osaki. “The outlook for BEVs remains unclear in 2028 and beyond, but if there will be a certain volume of BEVs [battery electric vehicles] on the market, we would like to capture that trend and market a Subaru original BEV product.”
