At the New York International Auto Show this week, Subaru revealed a pair of fully electric vehicles. The newly announced Trailseeker and an updated version of the brand’s Solterra EV are nothing special compared to the other electric vehicles on the market — their range figures, charging speeds, and other stats are solidly middle-of-the-road. Yet their very existence is a leap forward for a car brand that has been wasting an opportunity to target climate-conscious car buyers.
I’ve dragged Subaru for dragging its heels on electrification. Like fellow Japanese carmaker Toyota, Subie has lagged at the back of the pack in putting desirable EVs on the market. Its only plug-in hybrid, the Crosstrek PHEV, delivered a paltry 17 miles of electric-only range and has since been replaced by a forthcoming traditional hybrid. Subaru’s first true EV effort, the Solterra, was developed in collaboration with Toyota and is essentially the same car as the Toyota bZ4x. Both of those vehicles delivered a subpar range starting in the 220s and paled in comparison to better EVs on the market.
Toyota’s reluctance to embrace EVs, if disappointing, is at least understandable. The world’s largest carmaker prints money selling fossil fuel-burning vehicles and can afford to wait on the sidelines while other companies endure the bumps in the road on the way to making and selling EVs. Subaru is a different story.
In the United States, at least, Subaru has successfully branded itself as the car of the hiking set. Car commercials play up Subaru’s donations to the National Park Service and portray its customers as animal lovers and explorers. Yes, people outside of Colorado buy Subarus, but the brand’s American base is built on the green types who might be first in line to buy an electric car — if they were confident it could get them out to the wilderness and back, anyway.
With the uninspiring original Solterra as its sole electric offering, Subaru was in danger of losing a burgeoning market that should have been — or at least could have been — theirs. Rivian stormed into that market with a pickup and SUV that delivered outdoorsy looks, rugged capability, and enough range to reach many of the most popular off-the-beaten-path locations. R1T and R1S are luxury vehicles that start around $70,000, yes, but Rivian’s promised R2 and R3 vehicles would start in the $30,000 and $40,000 range — much closer to the cost of, say, a Subaru Crosstrek. It’s not alone, either. EVs like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 XRT show that other carmakers see the potential of building an off-road EV, especially if it could beat Subaru to the market and steal some of its buyers.
Yet here, at least, come signs of life from Subaru. By introducing the Trailseeker and the new Solterra as 2026 models, the company not only delivers a couple of decent outdoorsy EVs, but probably also gets them to market ahead of the R2 and R3, which are still in development.
The 2026 Solterra delivers an estimated 285 miles of range from its 74.7-kilowatt-hour battery, a huge and hugely needed jump from the 227 miles of the outgoing model. The 150-kilowatt charging speed lags behind the best in the industry — the Hyundai Ioniq 5 can do 350 kilowatts, for example — but at least it’s an improvement from the 100 kilowatts of the old car, and makes road trip charging stops acceptably brief. Crucially, the Solterra will come with the NACS charging port, the former Tesla proprietary standard around which the industry has now coalesced. That means the Subaru should be able to charge at lots and lots of Tesla Supercharger stations without the need for a dongle.
Perhaps more compelling is the all-new Subaru Trailseeker, which looks a bit like the electrified version of an Outback (though I’m not sure about the two-tone fender aesthetic). In other words, it’s exactly what you would’ve imagined if someone said to picture a Subaru EV. The range figure is a tad lower than the Solterra, at 260 miles, but that’s because the Trailseeker is longer, more spacious, and more powerful than its cousin. That might be more appealing to many buyers even with the slight range deduction. It, too, gets a NACS plug and 150-kilowatt charging. No surprise, it comes with all-wheel-drive and special driving modes to help the car handle mud, snow, and other uncertain terrain.
Subaru has yet to announce exact arrival dates and prices for these vehicles. The latter — particularly whether it can offer the Solterra and Trailseeker at a cost reasonably close to its gas-powered Crosstreks and Outbacks — will go a long way in deciding whether Subaru is finally ready to claim its slice of the EV space.
MTA
