Subaru: More EVs based on Toyota, but also own

At the end of 2021, Autoland introduced the first fully electric Subaru ever: the Solterra. At least, the brand’s first real electric production model. After all, between 2005 and 2008, Subaru produced about forty prototypes of an electric kei car: the R1e (photo 10) based on the R1. However, that little one never went into series production. The Subaru Solterra is the twin brother of the electric Toyota bZ4X and while the Solterra differs from its Toyota sibling in a handful of technical and exterior details, the Solterra shares both its platform and body with the bZ4X. It will not be the last electric Subaru based on a Toyota, says Project General Manager of the Solterra Daisuko Ono in conversation with AutoWeek.

Daisuke Ono (left), General Project Manager of the Subaru Solterra.

According to Daisuke Ono, Subaru will introduce more electric cars based on a Toyota in the coming years. It is therefore plausible that, based on Toyota’s new electric SUV, which will be one step below the bZ4X and will probably be called bZ3X, there will also be a Subaru version. Just as the Solterra shares its engineering and body with the bZ4X, we expect Subaru’s ‘bZ3X’ to similarly resemble its Toyota sibling. However, it does not stop there.

Daisuke Ono tells AutoWeek that Subaru will ‘eventually also carry more of its own’ electric cars, without giving any further explanation. From a cost perspective, it does not seem plausible that those cars will get a technical basis that has nothing to do with a platform that you also find under an electric Toyota, although nothing is impossible, of course. Toyota has an interest of more than 20 percent in Subaru and therefore does not dictate what Subaru develops itself or not. Possibly ‘more own’ means that there will be electric Subarus that are probably on an EV platform also used by Toyota, but that do not directly share their carriage with a Toyota model.