Co-developed, not badge engineered. That’s how the relationship of the new Subaru Solterra is described to that of its sibling car, the Toyota bZ4X.
The bZ4X is the kind of pragmatic car you’d expect from its maker, and likewise the Solterra from Subaru. It’s a spacious, 4.7m-long electric family crossover of the kind of shape and size many car makers are converging on at the same time for their latest mass-market EV offerings, the likes of the Nissan Ariya, Kia EV6, Volkswagen ID 4, and Tesla Model Y among them.
Like the bZ4X is for Toyota, the Solterra is the first series-production battery-electric car its maker has made. That co-development has obviously led to many of the specifications of the duo to be identical, yet the two do diverge in some key ways.
Whereas Toyota offers a single-motor two-wheel-drive version alongside a dual-motor all-wheel-drive model, for Subaru it’s all-wheel drive only, and unlike in the Toyota, the Subaru’s AWD system is a permanent one thanks to some software changes.