Subaru Solterra review

• What is it?
• What are the main numbers?
• Does it matter which I buy, Subaru or Toyota?
• What's the verdict?
• What is it like to drive?
• Range and charging?
• It’s a Subaru, it’ll get muddy…
• What is it like on the inside?
• What will passengers think?
• What should I be paying?

Overview

What is it?

Solterra: sun earth. In latin. It’s the first Subaru electric car. Think you’ve seen it elsewhere? Well it’s a joint project with Toyota. Just as the two firms co-operated on the 86/BRZ sports-car near-twins, they did the same with the Solterra and bZ4X. Which means it’s like a medium-sized crossover. Subaru sells 4WD versions only, competing with twin-motor editions of the Skoda Enyaq, Nissan Ariya, Kia EV6 and Ford Mustang Mach-E. Except their twin-motor versions are more powerful than this.

The Solterra, like the bZ4X, has striking creased sheetmetal, and even more striking wheel-arches: black-plastic eyebrow-sideburn affairs. Inside, it’s also more interesting than Subarus to date, but then they’ve hardly been known for avant-garde cabins.

Both companies always knew that for the joint venture not to be laughable, the resulting car had to be congruent with both brand’s histories. The Subaru faithful would raise pitchforks if they thought they were being denied four-wheel-drive, immense durability, decent driving enjoyment and safety.

So the two firms set about leveraging their various talents to get there. Subaru is great at torque management and chassis tuning. Toyota’s millions of hybrids have given it massive chops in battery durability, electronics efficiency and motor design. It also has a strong record on reliability and fitting lots of active safety tech.

The platform is basically Toyota’s, and it’ll spawn a range of Toyota and Lexus EVs over the coming years. Subaru is working on its own EV platform but it won’t be launching cars until at least 2025, so the Toyota tie-up got its name onto the EV guest list a few years early.

What are the main numbers?

Look at the range figures for the rivals and you’ll see their 4WD versions always have lower range than their 2WD versions on the same battery. Anyway, the Solterra’s range is upper-mid-pack, likely to be enough for nearly everyone. It’s 291 miles WLTP on 18-inch wheels and 259 on 20s. Again that’s just like the rivals, which tend to quote the small-wheels figure then sell you a big-wheels car.

There are 107bhp motors at each end, enough for a brisk acceleration with easy tractive security. Interestingly, although the front and rear motors give matching power and torque, and are both the permanent-magnet type, they’re not the same physical objects. The engineers went to the trouble of making the front one narrow and fat to get the best turning circle they could. Meanwhile the back one is wider but thinner to keep the boot floor low.

Prices start at a fiver less than £50k. That’s par for the course among rivals.

Does it matter which I buy, Subaru or Toyota?

There’s not much difference between Solterra and bZ4X, no. At least not if you want 4WD, which is all Subaru sells. Toyota does a single-motor FWD version too.

In the looks department, the Subaru has a slightly different hexagon surround for what we’d once have called the grille. It also has round foglamps. The two have different tailgates too, but you wonder why, given they’d gone to the trouble of tooling two different pressings, they didn’t differentiate those back ends more.

Although the max performance of both cars is the same, the Subaru has ‘sport’ mode to give its accelerator some edgier keen-ness at the beginning of its travel. Below that you’ve got normal and eco.

The Toyota just has ‘normal’ and ‘eco’, yet mash the bZ4X’s pedal to the carpet in normal and it’s just as powerful as the Subaru is in sport (which goes to show how pointless powertrain modes often are – and it’s the same on petrol cars). The Subaru also has regeneration paddles, the Toyota not.

The Subaru has very slightly heavier steering and stiffer rebound damping where the Toyota is more plush. Well that’s what the chief engineers told us, but your TopGear tester couldn’t actually feel any difference. And this was after driving them back-to-back down a quick, undulating road that did put the body control to its mettle.

Anyway, what you’re reading here is that Subaru was keen to make a crossover that’s practical but still has an enjoyable edge. In other words, one that speaks to its heritage. Click on the ‘driving’ tab of this review to see if it succeeded.

If you’re a traditional Subaru buyer, electricity might suit you well. The 4WD and low centre of gravity give it an almost eerie similarity with the way a flat-four Subaru goes down the road. It’s also remarkable in mud – we tried it. It looks mildly kooky but so have most Subarus over the years. And as for the battery range, well your petrol Subaru never went far on a tankful did it?

The performance figures are only moderate-to good. So don’t come here expecting a return to the days of your Impreza WRX and Forester STI. But there is a spiritedness to the drive that most electric rivals lack.

Practicality is very much up to class standards, and the cabin more interesting than some. The electric numbers – range, charge time – are OK, but that’s when facing some rivals that have been around two or three years and might get mid-life range bumps before long.

This isn’t, all-in, an outstanding car. We suspect you’ll alight on the Solterra because you enjoy the looks, you want the off-road ability, you trust the brand’s reliability and you’ve a good relationship with the local dealer. And if you did, we wouldn’t criticise you at all.

Driving

What is it like to drive?

Subaru hasn’t sold a quick car in the UK for some time, and this isn’t a quick car. But it is responsive in that EV way, at all speeds up to motorway rate – the thrust falls away beyond a foreign-motorway 81mph. So you can slip into traffic gaps and overtake and punch out of corners because it happens at the exact moment you floor the accelerator.

The regen paddles invoke only a gentle pullback. Same with the one-pedal driving button. You still have to use the brake pedal for anything more than a mild slowdown. But that doesn’t harm efficiency, as like in any decent EV the first part of the brake travel is bringing in regeneration not friction. Some rivals have an auto regeneration setting, using the front radar to slow you down when the car in front slows, or you approach a junction. The Subaru doesn’t. You’re doing the driving, right?

The steering is well-weighted, and moves slickly off the dead ahead, so it’s easy to hold your motorway lane or feed through country bends at all speeds. The steering responds well partly because there’s little wait for the body to roll. Push hard in a bend and the thing eventually moves into mild understeer, and there’s little you can do to erase that apart from ease the power. Try to unsettle it then shove the pedal and the ESP just cuts in, neatly but definitively.

Which makes it sound a bit boring but versus rivals there’s more feel for your grip, and more general precision. That makes it feel lighter than rivals, but of course still heavier than petrol cars the same size.

The low centre of gravity also means there’s no need for stiff anti-roll bars, so you’re not rocked side-to-side on a straight but bumpy road. The ride isn’t soft, but it’s very well controlled and shaves off sharp bumps. That’s a traditional Subaru characteristic.

Generally the cabin is peaceful, but at motorway speed both wind and tyre noise get a bit squally. Subaru has always been big on safety-related driver assist, and the Solterra inherits Toyota’s full suite, which is even bigger. The adaptive cruise control and lane centering works smoothly.

Range and charging?

The range on 18-inch wheels is 289 miles for the Limited on its 18-inch wheels, or 257 for the upper-spec Touring on its 20s. The 18s don’t look too bad so choose carefully. The Solterra can accept 150kW DC, getting back to 80 percent charge in about half an hour.

It’s a Subaru, it’ll get muddy…

Off-road in an EV? The short overhangs, flat bottom and decent clearance mean you’re less likely to get hung up on bumps and ruts. The traction control systems are simply superb, gently finagling the very best grip from each tyre, aided by the subtlety of electric torque control. Hill-descent and constant-speed systems work well too. In short, we were staggered at the muddy climbs it would manage, even on its eco road tyres. It’ll wade to 500mm. We’ve tried that, so stop your electricity-and-water sniggering. The all-round cameras help spot obstacles too.

Interior

What is it like on the inside?

The cabin looks good in photos. A strip of cloth covers some of the dash, and the transmission selector and cupholders are on a flying buttress console with more storage underneath. Typical for EVs, but well enough executed.

A central screen is par in size and has decent definition. It’ll do phone mirroring of course. For the car’s native maps and control menus, the graphics are much nicer than Subaru has managed before.

The driver’s screen is sensibly laid out but its graphics are still a bit coarse. Steering-wheel pads scroll through some useful sub-screens; energy use, entertainment, driver-assist.

The driver’s screen is mounted some way ahead of you on a sweeping bridge. Looks good, and for most of us works well. It’s in your sightline above the steering wheel rim, so you don’t have to drop your gaze far below the road. And because it’s distant you don’t need to re-focus either. Most of the advantages of a HUD, then.

But if you like to sit very reclined, the wheel rim might block some of the screen. It’s something people sometimes find with Peugeots. Try before you buy.

What will passengers think?

Space is decent. Headroom in the back is OK for six-footers even with the top-grade double sunroof. There’s the usual EV gotcha that the battery raises the floor a bit, so it needs the front seats raised a little to give enough foot-room behind. Overall it’s marginally less roomy than the VW Group MEB crossovers or Mustang. Four USB power sockets are dotted around the cabin.

The boot is a decent size and has room under its floor for cables or mucky boots. No froot though.

Buying

What should I be paying?

It starts at £49,995 for the Limited trim. That’s around a couple of hundred quid less than the cheapest Toyota AWD version.

But in the Toyota you can save £2,600 by deleting the rear motor, and if you do that you can also select a lead-in bZ4X that’s less again. Subaru’s menu is shorter – only a mid and high trim, and only 4WD. And fewer options.

So the Solterra is about £10k more than a Forester hybrid. Just saying.

The Touring version gets quite a bit of extra kit for the £3k uplift, but the efficiency and range hit because of its big wheels is a definite gotcha. Again though, rivals’ big-wheel options always mean a range cut too.

The Limited has to get by with cloth trim, but the ‘leather’ on the Touring is fake, so cloth’s fine thanks. The Touring also gets electric front seats, the fixed two-pane glass roof, a stereo upgrade and wireless phone charging.

Both have adaptive multi-segment LED headlights, and the full driver-assist and safety bundle, and a heat pump for winter efficiency.

Subaru’s warranty is three years and 60,000 miles. The battery’s warranty is 100,000 miles. But Toyota is warranting the same battery to one million km (620,000 miles) at 70 percent capacity. Now you might make that a reason to go to Toyota, or you might just say well it’s obviously a dependable battery or they wouldn’t do that, so you’re not going to worry either way.

Keyword: Subaru Solterra review