Can someone explain to me how Subaru isn't going electric? The Outback platform is perfect for EVs and would be wildly popular with their base.
All I can see is a joint effort with Toyota to bring an EV to market by......2025. Lol!
Their stock has been in the crapper over the last 5 years with a market cap just north of $20B, despite being wildly popular in parts of the US.
I guess their margins aren't great and they don't have the means to transition. A shame since they're a fairly decent company and brand.
Subaru is converting their entire line up to one platform that is stretched or otherwise tweaked for the different cars. It's the latest trend in car manufacturing. I'm not sure the Outback is on that platform yet. I know the Impreza/Crosstrek were the first to use it.
Converting an ICE platform to BEV is not an optimum layout because where things go is different in the two vehicles. It's much more efficient to design an EV from the ground up as an EV.
Also one of the last places where ICE make more sense than EVs is in the serious off roading community. For people who want to go deep into the wilderness and camp, a car that can get there and back and can get a range extension from some fuel cans strapped to the roof rack, is an advantage over an EV that is tied to terrestrial power sources.
The majority of people who have off road capable cars and trucks never take them off road and they could convert to an EV and probably never be very inconvenienced by it. But for the hard core offroad types who do go off into the wilderness for a week or more at a time, an ICE still makes sense.
Subaru is only partially owned by Toyota, but as
@Doggydogworld said, all the Japanese brands except Nissan are behind with EVs and Nissan has only made one. I believe the US is Subaru's biggest market by a larger margin than most other foreign brands, so they are much more sensitive to trends in American car tastes. EVs are becoming a thing in the US and Subaru will have their first EV soon. How fast they electrify their fleet will depend on how fast customer demand in the US changes.
Toyota may have met the 2021 EU standard, but tougher standards are coming and Toyota is probably going to find it difficult to meet them with hybrids. But Toyota is also probably the most conservative car company in the world. They tend to stick with platforms longer than other brands and change tech more slowly. This is a way they keep their quality scores up. Older car designs with all the bugs worked out are more reliable than new designs with teething problems.
