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Subaru has some catching up to do with electrification, and that’s not news to them. The Japanese automaker has just one fully electric vehicle for sale, the Solterra, which is based on an EV from Toyota called the bZ4X. Subaru has lofty goals to get more of its customers into BEVs and hybrid vehicles, though. By 2025, the automaker wants many more EVs to make their way into its lineup.
As Automotive News reports, Subaru is moving in that direction. Not only has it moved people and money to focus on electrification, but it’s going to collaborate more soon with Toyota for engineering resources. Subaru sees collaboration as essential to its efforts.
When the automaker does plan to have its own dedicated EVs in the mid-2020s, they will be built on the same line as the brand’s ICE cars. It apparently won’t be until 2027 that these cars will be built on a dedicated line. That could mean a compromised design in favor of manufacturability as opposed to important features like range.
Toyota’s own electrification efforts aren’t exactly the envy of the world, either. The bZ4X is currently the world’s largest automaker’s only BEV, and its specifications aren’t impressive. The entire situation casts doubt on what the two companies can do within the first half of next decade. Keep in mind, Toyota’s sole BEV offering exists in contrast to a growing stable of fully electric vehicles from the likes of Hyundai, Ford, and General Motors.
That being said, Toyota does have a new CEO, Koji Sato. He is much more focused on electrification than his predecessor, Akio Toyoda. With any luck, the car-building giant will be able to leverage its vast engineering resources to accelerate its pace of electrification. Japanese automakers as a whole may be skeptical of electrification, but it’s necessary at the very least to please regulators, and satisfy a growing portion of new car buyers.
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