2026 Subaru Solterra review: The badge-engineered bZ ain’t bad
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Not that I'd ever be able to afford one, but lord, that god-awful, glued on tablet look for the interior just nopes me out of any interest in it. It's like they put all their design effort on the outside and have zero shits to care about what the driver will actually see almost the entire time they own the car.
The Slate truck has more interior appeal than that dash has.
The Slate truck has more interior appeal than that dash has.
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Test drove a Subaru Forester a couple months ago. The salesperson (excitedly) told me it had a Toyota drivetrain, and sure enough, it made me really sad to drive. Nothing wrong with it, just felt soulless somehow. It matched every Toyota I've rented. They're great cars, and if you're optimizing for reliability and efficiency, it can't be beat.
If the Solterra is anything like that, I can imagine it sucked the fun out of an EV drivetrain.
If the Solterra is anything like that, I can imagine it sucked the fun out of an EV drivetrain.
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Parenthetically, Ionna chargers are unbelievably good. Fast, always work, a great experience, and NO FUCKING APP. If all fast charging was as good as Ionna's we might actually make some progress with EV adoption.
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"In any case, it usually only takes a false alarm from the overeager EyeSight driver assist"
My wife's 2020 Ascent has this very unnerving habit of braking aggressively on highways if the car in front of me moves into an exit lane on the right (not many left exits in Philly area) even if there is now no car in front of me. I'm waiting for the day when it does this in front of a cop, and I get pulled over for brake checking or worse...
I've mentioned it to two different Subaru dealers multiple times and I just get blank stares from them.
My wife's 2020 Ascent has this very unnerving habit of braking aggressively on highways if the car in front of me moves into an exit lane on the right (not many left exits in Philly area) even if there is now no car in front of me. I'm waiting for the day when it does this in front of a cop, and I get pulled over for brake checking or worse...
I've mentioned it to two different Subaru dealers multiple times and I just get blank stares from them.
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Just bought a Toyota CH-R last weekend. I went in looking for the Bz because it was supposed to be larger. And dimensionally it is on the spec sheet, but I found them to be about the exact same sitting inside. Every review I read talked about how one was bigger than the other, but to my single data point anecdote, CH-R/Uncharted and the Bz/Solterra are effectively the same size. That was important for me to know because it made my choices of local inventory a lot larger.
Happy with the purchase. The only bummer is the fan speed for the environment controls is touchscreen. The rest of the knobs I fiddle with when driving (volume, air speed) are actual knobs or have a button on the steering wheel.
Happy with the purchase. The only bummer is the fan speed for the environment controls is touchscreen. The rest of the knobs I fiddle with when driving (volume, air speed) are actual knobs or have a button on the steering wheel.
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Huh? I think the salesperson was wrong. All Foresters still use Subaru's boxer engine and AWD drivetrain. The hybrid Forester uses Toyota's motor-generator, but that's about it. Subaru is very slow to make drivetrain updates, so other than the hybrid bit, it's pretty much the same system that's been in their cars for years...
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Of course you'll get blank stares. Anything else would be admitting that an issue exists, and that Subarus are not perfect.
I don't have your wife's issue in my 2020 Forester, but I have my own issues with it complaining about local trees that are about to jump out in front of me. Or that when climbing a hill on cruise control the CVT surges, or that when I start the car there is a seemingly random delay to when the entertainment system actually turns on. Or my ongoing fear that the hood is about to fly off at speed because it is so flimsy and wobbles around.
But back to topic, If I was replacing my Forester in the near future, I'd probably buy a Trailseeker over the Solterra
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I normally don't care about the "glued on tablet" appearance of some of these EVs but this particular screen in this car looks absurdly huge in that setup - and I drive a Mach-E with a 17" vertical screen. The Solterra one just looks ridiculous. Maybe if it were moved down an inch or two? Or an inch or two smaller? I don't know.
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This is true for my wife's Subaru outback also: the eyesight field of view is a little bit too large for what it considers as "in front of the vehicle". My guess is that they don't have good logic for determining whether a road is curving or not and so compensated by just making the field of view wider.
My Hyundai ioniq five does not have this problem, and has a lot less trouble when a car takes an exit ramp in front of it. On the flip side, the range for detecting the key fob and opening the trunk is massive, so that I can just walk past the side of the car and unless I hurry, it'll open the trunk. The Subaru doesn't have that problem.
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Why for the love of god did the charge port on the 2026 Solterra and bZ4x move from the driver's side quarter panel to the passenger front quarter panel? That truly has to be the single most inconvenient place to put a charging port. No driver wants to walk all the way around the car every single charge.
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For me a car is a tool to reliably and safely get me from A to B, and not a piece of art to dazzle someone with. And that's something my Forester does, including driving over rough forestry roads and utilizing the full 8.5" of clearance.Looks soulless like the rest of Subaru's lineup. Solterra reminds me more of a pair of sneakers rather than anything else.
Random glowies for glowies' sake.
Also I'm not sure what this means in the article:
It'll take more than 30 minutes to charge from 50% than from 10%?
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I wonder where Subaru, as a brand, goes from here. To me at least, I identified them with those flat fours, quirky Surbaru styling (although, that has faded over the years, bring back the XT you cowards!), and a solid AWD system.
Now, almost every EV has AWD, the flat four is soon to be a relic of the past, and if everything is a rebadged Toyota.... Sigh.
Now, almost every EV has AWD, the flat four is soon to be a relic of the past, and if everything is a rebadged Toyota.... Sigh.
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Did you even read the 1st paragraph of the story before commenting?????
But to catch you up, the Solterra is based on the Toyota e-TNGA platform, but is not a direct copy of Toyota's bZ (which is also based on the same platform)
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I don't understand - EVs are SO much more powerful and efficient than ICE vehicles why designers don't go a little more nuts with the designs. Bring back fins and greebles!
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I wonder if it was so they could pull in to Tesla superchargers and have the older/shorter cables reach? That would be the opposite of the left rear Tesla location that they have to reverse into.
Manufacturers sharing a platform for the same vehicle under different brands (badges). Sometimes it's completely different brands that have not much other relation and sometimes it's brands under the same manufacturer that just sell the same car styled slightly differently under different brands (GM has been probably one of the worst offenders of this in the past, selling the same vehicle under as many as 4 or 5 different brands - but nearly everyone does it).
Even something like the Chevy Silverado and the GMC Sierra is basically badge engineering. But if you want to go farther back, the Mitsubishi Starion and Chrysler Conquest back in the day would be a good example. And lately I think there was a deal between Nissan and Mitsubishi to sell the Outlander PHEV as a Nissan Rogue PHEV.
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What's with the oddball steering wheel shape? Do we have to copy Tesla EVERYWHERE!?
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I'll always keep saying that for a general consumer car, 0-60 is way less important than 60-0 times.
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I think the point was that BECAUSE it doesn't have a boxer engine, it feels slightly less like a real Subaru.
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chaos215bar2
Ars Praefectus
Touchscreen climate controls means no sale.
It's really that simple for me. If I can't access basic controls by feel, I'm not buying. And that means all of them.
It's really that simple for me. If I can't access basic controls by feel, I'm not buying. And that means all of them.
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We looked at one of these. The driver sits fairly low, which is a problem for our driveway. The seats are uncomfortable. The small display moved out on the dash (with the speedometer) is a real problem for people over 40; with the low seating, the display is above the close focus area for bifocal or progressive lenses. We passed.
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Never heard of Ionna but my experience with the most common EV charging stations in the US have been uniformly good.
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I'm with you there.
I've harped on some of Honda's current interior design like you get in the Civic and I will again.
It doesn't need to be analog gauges, heck their interior is far from perfect but you get:
- A steering wheel that encourages hands at 9 and 3 and doesn't feel too big or small.
- An instrument cluster that feels like an instrument cluster.
- An instrument cluster that is big enough that the steering won't hide it if you use a sane driving position.
- Physical controls for the important stuff.
You don't need to copy everything another manufacturer does but there are some human machine interface basics that feel like they were lost once every manufacturer went the way of big displays.
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Ionna is a charging network funded by eight legacy automakers (BMW, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, and Toyota) and has built around 1000 charging stalls in 100 locations in the last year and are looking accelerate to reach 30,000 stalls by 2030. The chargers are 800V (they can charge 400V as well), 400kW (about the fastest you can get in the US). They have covered, pull-through stalls with a waiting lounge.
They also just partnered with Circle-K take over and upgrade/expand their 85 locations as well to 400kW.
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IMHO, Subaru missed a huge opportunity. For years they'd built an image as the car brand for tree huggers. They could have leaned into EVs and kept that going. Instead, they sided with the Trump administration in fighting environmentally friendly efficiency regulations. I guess they decided it would be too expensive to develop their own EV platform, so now their cars just look like any other EV on the road, with another manufacturers drive train to boot. It's a bold strategy, Cotton.
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Not a single Tesla uses the weird squirkle-shaped steering wheel. You might be thinking of the yoke, but that’s an entirely different shape.
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CH-R is essentially a shortened BZ. The size difference would be in some combination of Rear Seat legroom and Cargo space. Not in driver space.
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It does not, in fact, have a Toyota drivetrain. It uses updated Subaru boxer engines in both conventional and hybrid versions. The conventional is straight-up Subaru symmetrical AWD, and the Hybrid uses a unique, uh, hybrid of mechanical AWD and e-CVT that is not shared with any Toyota.
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I was in my local Subaru dealership this week and looked at the specs for the hybrid Forester. It has an EPA estimated 35 mpg. In my 2020 Forester I get 31 to 32 mpg real world. So I'm not even sure the hybrid is worth it.
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I was very, VERY impressed with the Ionna chargers while watching the Aging Wheels/Technology Connections cross-country road trip. They just... worked, and with a credit card like any gas pump in the country. It's something I've been saying for a while; EV adoption will get better if the charging stations actually, you know, work!
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Been driving one quite a lot because someone prefers to be driven.
I think it gets 3.9 miles/kWh (CA weather), and we're not slowpokes. 3.2 would require being quite dangerous.
Love the regen paddles, the power, the smooth driving.
The squircle wheel bends where I'd prefer to put my hand. The infotainment is not great, but AA/Carplay work 99% of the time.
The nannies are infuriating. Timeouts are way too short, so it beeps at you when you double-check your surroundings. It demands tunnel-vision driving.
I will not spend my money on a modern Subaru if I can't set the driver attention timeouts (and stupid cross-traffic warning) to something more reasonable.
I think it gets 3.9 miles/kWh (CA weather), and we're not slowpokes. 3.2 would require being quite dangerous.
Love the regen paddles, the power, the smooth driving.
The squircle wheel bends where I'd prefer to put my hand. The infotainment is not great, but AA/Carplay work 99% of the time.
The nannies are infuriating. Timeouts are way too short, so it beeps at you when you double-check your surroundings. It demands tunnel-vision driving.
I will not spend my money on a modern Subaru if I can't set the driver attention timeouts (and stupid cross-traffic warning) to something more reasonable.
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I heard that the odd flattened steering wheel takes that shape so that it doesn't block the driver's view of the odd top-mounted instrument cluster. The driver is meant to look over the top of the wheel, rather than looking through the open portion of a round wheel to see where a traditional inset gauge cluster would be.
Toyota created a weird problem and then created a weird solution.
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For better or worse, Subaru historically more of a rally racing / outdoors brand than an environmental brand - with their earlier model all being pretty big gas guzzlers (the more recent CVT model do have much better efficiency). My 2007 Legacy Wagon (stiffer/lower suspension/ground clearance than the Outback) only got like 20-25mpg. Since then Subaru pivots towards being more of a "safe" vehicle for suburban families who need/want AWD and 7 inches of ground clearance.
Yes, Subaru is a relatively small company - selling less than 1M vehicle globally and their entire annual R&D budget is only like $1B USD (compared to Ford's $8B USD and Toyota's $9B USD although the latter obviously has less excuses). Mazda is in a similar position with only 1.2M global sold vehicles and $1.1B annual budget.
As for fighting efficiency standards - Toyota, Nissan, Kia/Hyundai, GM, Stellantis/Chrysler also joined the Trump admin (with Ford, Honda, VW, and BMW siding with California).
That's the tyranny of aero. It's why the Ferrari Luce doesn't really look like a Ferrari although for Ferrari they might have done some fancy gradient paint job to evoke more detail/character - but then they gave design to "minimalist" Jony Ive (which I think was a mistake).
Given Subaru real world situation, I don't think using another vehicle's electric drive train was the wrong idea. They can't jump completely into EV because they would run out of money if they abandon their existing customer base with lack of updates. I think if Subaru/Mazda did a joined EV venture with a company like Toyota/Honda (who are also EV-hesistant) they could share R&D costs and ensure low prices very larger production volumes. Once you get ride of the boxer engine, the turbo intake on the hood, and the mechanical AWD... the Subaru is really mostly exterior/interior styling and outdoor-friendly features (like a fold-out table or gear storage and stuff). I think a fair number of people would pick a Subaru over a Toyota with the same platform just for that.
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