"Subaru is killing off gas cars and will only sell rebadged Toyota EVs in Europe."
Subaru was talking about an electric model over 20 years ago! I saw the concept drawings. Whoever has run Subaru for the last 20 years needs to be given a watch and thanked for their service on their way out the door.
The idea that Subaru could build a viable electric car 20 years ago seems like a stretch. Many other companies may have had electric car concepts that were scrapped because they could neither figure out how to build them, nor was there a strong market for them.
Subaru is not a large car manufacturer. Toyota sells over 10x the amount of cars and Nissan sells 3x-5x, they are not equals. And Nissan did build an electric car 16 years ago and the company is currently circling the drain.
It was never going to be a jump straight to EV (although the concept car model type still doesn't exist to this day), they knew the path was to go hybrid first. They've made some weak attempts at hybrids but they have fallen so far behind in EV development at this point that they soon will only be selling rebadged Toyotas. There's no way that's sustainable for an auto manufacturer.
> Known for its boxer engines, Subaru’s shift to an all-electric lineup is not necessarily by choice. Subaru Germany confirmed the news to Auto Motor und sport, saying the decision is due to the European Union’s emissions and driver-assistance regulations.
I don't know if it's gotten any better, but I won't buy another Subaru after my 2020. It constantly beeps at me whenever the EyeSight can't see the lanes in the road, even when it's not steering for me. It's a safety hazard that pretends to be a safety feature.
I've got a 2020 XV (Australian Crosstrek nameplate) and it has relatively few annoying EU-mandated safety features.
It won't start unless I've done my seatbelt up, which is annoying when I'm e.g. driving in a cow paddock at 10km/h and trying to get through multiple gates, but it doesn't do lane assist or have a driver-facing camera or anything like that.
Interesting how Infotainment crosses into EyeSight for you though. That's not at all what that means.
And yes it beeps and you can't turn the beeping off completely. It's supposed to annoy you into using the blinkers properly. Different cars/model years seem to have different levels of annoyingness in the actual beep and different volume settings available though.
My (also 2020) never beeps when EyeSight can't see the lanes, whether its steering or not. It beeps when you cross a line without blinking or you're crossing the lines and would soon be driving on the shoulder/into the trees. It does sometimes have issues where it beeps a bit too early, i.e. it seems the calculations from the visuals are a bit off in certain situations.
It’s the screen yelling at me so I consider it part of the same system. It’s not about the blinkers it just turns off frequently because there are poor lane markings where I live.
Besides that the rest of the UI is slow and annoying. I can never remember which sub menu different annoying beeps are under. Carplay is much slower too than in other cars.
YMMV as always. I don't even notice the visuals. The lane change alerts at least in the two Subarus I've had that had EyeSight already have it on the main dash, i.e. the small screen not the big Infotainment screen in the middle console.
I don't get the "turning off because lane markings" comment tbh and we got some pretty bad ones here as well, especially in winter (i.e. often none at all :) Are we talking completely different things or did they change anything past 2024 models (last one I know)?
Coz EyeSight does not turn off just because there are no markings. It turns off if it can't see, i.e. too much rain, smudgy glass in front of the cameras etc. It doesn't care about the lane markings just to follow the car in front of me. But sure if it can't find the lane markings then I can't enable the auto-steering (which I find way too janky anyway - pretty annoying that it seems to steer left and right between the markings instead of holding steady in the middle and adjusting smoothly, so I never use it).
I can never remember where settings I touch exactly once to set them up either. For any car. Set it and forget it.
No experience with carplay but Android Auto support does depend a lot on the phone. My older Motorola and Samsung phone always sucked, often didn't connect at all with most cables. Since I got a Pixel, zero problems at all.
Nobody has to accept that disclaimer even a single time. I never have. Most times its disappeared before I ever get a chance to have to do anything on the screen. I just start driving :shrug:
I’ve rented a fair number of cars in the last year. All of them seemed equally bad to me.
Like I’m sure people will have preferences or pet peeve that effects one brand more than another other, but the infotainment systems just all seem uninspiring to me. Some do some parts better while doing others worse.
It would be unusual to get a Subaru rental unless you specifically asked for one. The issue with theirs is terrible input lag and random hang ups similar to Phones of early vintage
Tesla is probably best, Hyundai has a pretty decent one for a big manufacturer. I havent tried Rivian. Audi was ok. The rest are pretty mid, rental jeep one was really bad.
The Rivian infotainment is incredibly confusing for me. So difficult to find anything. I haven't been using it for a long time or anything, but figuring out how to access things like the AC temperature was super annoying. Everything is little icons and submenus and there's hardly any labels!
Also it's based on Google maps which I'm also not a big fan of.
Not sure why this is being downvoted so hard. More than the ui ux experience the damn thing just freezes and needs to be restated regardless of the phone being used. Subaru outsourced their software and it shows.
If you're buying a Subaru, you're buying it because you value safety and reliability of the car, because your life/livelihood depend on it. You're not concerned about the infotainment system.
No you're not. You're buying a Subaru because how awesome was the WRX STi and how they did in WRC! Naturally I speak for the motivations of all Subaru buyers and you don't. We can't know what reasons people do buy a Subaru, but people buying them because of awesome things professional race car drivers do in modified versions of their car has got to be non-zero.
As a 25 year Subaru driver, it's a bit of one and a bit of two. I have a safe ride in the winter and do a full Costco run, and I can book it down curvy dirt roads at unsafe speeds to indulge my inner rally car driver.
I was actually shocked to find that Subaru in the US was this kind of safe, maybe outdoorsy brand. I had never seen anything but Imprezas inspired by WRC before I got here. Only boy racers drove them where I grew up.
Well I for one got so used to the CVT it's not even funny any more. Every time we rent a car we get a random non-CVT car and the acceleration behavior is just so funky in comparison, I can't stand it any more.
They sell reliable cars with a good AWD system and drivetrain and decent ground clearance.
If they sold reliable PHEVs or even BEVs with 220mm+ ground clearance and some branding around torque and traction control, and they had any kind of advantage over Toyota in that niche, they'd probably do alright in the "I don't want a Land Cruiser BUT" market.
(Yeah, yeah, EJ head gaskets, just don't buy anything with an EJ series engine.)
in theory EVs would be ideal for off-roading. Low end torque and the ability to control the motors independently. I think something like the Mercedes portal axles attached to electric motors would be amazing.
Yes but that’s inherent to the platform and needs to be controlled really well with software which is not something the brand is good at. They had great mechanical awd systems that are not relevant to this type of design
Well, historically Subaru hits a different market segment than Toyota/Honda.
This curious bit is that it was 'You want something between a Toyota/Honda and a Lexus/Acura, but closer to the capability of a Jeep'. Where it's more curious, is that the modern Subaru hybrids are actually better at off-roading than the new Jeep Cherokee hybrid.
Why is that? Well at least IMO it's cause Subaru sticks to their guns, their hybrid system sticks to what they have always tried to do versus the Jeep doing, at least AFAIK, the same sort of 'AWD' hybrid setup of most hybrids, where the rear wheels are electric only and you have to wait for the computer to decide to apply Any power.
Interestingly, The closest hybrid AWD design I'm aware of to what Subaru is doing, is Ford with the AWD HF55 on the Maverick, in that case they are doing it to also help make sure it can meet the needs for 4K towing.
It's not as efficient, but it is at last consistent from a branding execution strategy. Definitely moreso than Jeep who has watered down everything they sell so much it's... who knows anymore.
Stelantis turned Jeep into a lifestyle brand. They're milking as much money out of the brand as they can. I don't know how they think this will play out in the long term, but it seems like companies these days aren't thinking about the long term.
That's part, I think not to dissimilar from a jeep, people buy them for the "lifestyle". Plenty of people take them off road, but plenty also like the idea that they could go off road.
I stopped buying Subaru and started buying Toyota specifically for the reasons you listed and because Toyota (and Honda) make more reliable cars that hold their value longer. Used car depreciation curves tell the only story I need to read before purchasing a car.
"Subaru is killing off gas cars and will only sell rebadged Toyota EVs in Europe."
Subaru was talking about an electric model over 20 years ago! I saw the concept drawings. Whoever has run Subaru for the last 20 years needs to be given a watch and thanked for their service on their way out the door.
It took 20 years of research and development to create an EV that can blow it’s head gasket every 50k miles as per Subaru tradition.
Gen3 Toyota Prius engines had head gasket failures too, haven’t both companies since resolved these?
Hey now, my Subaru made it 90K miles before blowing the head gasket.
The idea that Subaru could build a viable electric car 20 years ago seems like a stretch. Many other companies may have had electric car concepts that were scrapped because they could neither figure out how to build them, nor was there a strong market for them.
Subaru is not a large car manufacturer. Toyota sells over 10x the amount of cars and Nissan sells 3x-5x, they are not equals. And Nissan did build an electric car 16 years ago and the company is currently circling the drain.
It was never going to be a jump straight to EV (although the concept car model type still doesn't exist to this day), they knew the path was to go hybrid first. They've made some weak attempts at hybrids but they have fallen so far behind in EV development at this point that they soon will only be selling rebadged Toyotas. There's no way that's sustainable for an auto manufacturer.
Subaru's EVs are not simply rebadged. They are based on Toyota designs and use Toyota software, but Subaru does more than rebadge them
Isn't this because of the EU's target of reducing CO2 by 55% by 2030 which is effectively an EV mandate?
> Known for its boxer engines, Subaru’s shift to an all-electric lineup is not necessarily by choice. Subaru Germany confirmed the news to Auto Motor und sport, saying the decision is due to the European Union’s emissions and driver-assistance regulations.
Yes.
I don’t think I’ve seen more than 10 Subarus in Europe.
Subaru the brand with the worst infotainment in the market is going all electric. That’s going to go well
> Since 2019, every new Subaru has come standard with both Apple CarPlay® and Android Auto™
https://www.subaru.com/vehicle-info/article/what-is-apple-ca...
Infotainement is more than just CarPlay.
I don't know if it's gotten any better, but I won't buy another Subaru after my 2020. It constantly beeps at me whenever the EyeSight can't see the lanes in the road, even when it's not steering for me. It's a safety hazard that pretends to be a safety feature.
I've got a 2020 XV (Australian Crosstrek nameplate) and it has relatively few annoying EU-mandated safety features.
It won't start unless I've done my seatbelt up, which is annoying when I'm e.g. driving in a cow paddock at 10km/h and trying to get through multiple gates, but it doesn't do lane assist or have a driver-facing camera or anything like that.
Interesting how Infotainment crosses into EyeSight for you though. That's not at all what that means.
And yes it beeps and you can't turn the beeping off completely. It's supposed to annoy you into using the blinkers properly. Different cars/model years seem to have different levels of annoyingness in the actual beep and different volume settings available though.
My (also 2020) never beeps when EyeSight can't see the lanes, whether its steering or not. It beeps when you cross a line without blinking or you're crossing the lines and would soon be driving on the shoulder/into the trees. It does sometimes have issues where it beeps a bit too early, i.e. it seems the calculations from the visuals are a bit off in certain situations.
It’s the screen yelling at me so I consider it part of the same system. It’s not about the blinkers it just turns off frequently because there are poor lane markings where I live. Besides that the rest of the UI is slow and annoying. I can never remember which sub menu different annoying beeps are under. Carplay is much slower too than in other cars.
YMMV as always. I don't even notice the visuals. The lane change alerts at least in the two Subarus I've had that had EyeSight already have it on the main dash, i.e. the small screen not the big Infotainment screen in the middle console.
I don't get the "turning off because lane markings" comment tbh and we got some pretty bad ones here as well, especially in winter (i.e. often none at all :) Are we talking completely different things or did they change anything past 2024 models (last one I know)?
Coz EyeSight does not turn off just because there are no markings. It turns off if it can't see, i.e. too much rain, smudgy glass in front of the cameras etc. It doesn't care about the lane markings just to follow the car in front of me. But sure if it can't find the lane markings then I can't enable the auto-steering (which I find way too janky anyway - pretty annoying that it seems to steer left and right between the markings instead of holding steady in the middle and adjusting smoothly, so I never use it).
I can never remember where settings I touch exactly once to set them up either. For any car. Set it and forget it.
No experience with carplay but Android Auto support does depend a lot on the phone. My older Motorola and Samsung phone always sucked, often didn't connect at all with most cables. Since I got a Pixel, zero problems at all.
I’m just describing my experience as accurately as I can. I wouldn’t buy another Subaru.
Btw if you've got eyesight it means you can buy comma.ai (not cheap) which is after market not quite self driving so it steers and gas/brakes for you.
(not sponsored)
And then there's the unexpectedly high cost if you ever need to replace your windshield.
do you enjoying having to accept the popup disclaimer literally every single time you start the car? i sure do, love it, what a UX
Nobody has to accept that disclaimer even a single time. I never have. Most times its disappeared before I ever get a chance to have to do anything on the screen. I just start driving :shrug:
That disclaimer is both worthless and such an annoyance
Can't you turn eyesight off?
I can but I actually like the safety it provides. It just doesn’t need to loudly distract me every time it momentarily stops.
I’ve rented a fair number of cars in the last year. All of them seemed equally bad to me.
Like I’m sure people will have preferences or pet peeve that effects one brand more than another other, but the infotainment systems just all seem uninspiring to me. Some do some parts better while doing others worse.
It would be unusual to get a Subaru rental unless you specifically asked for one. The issue with theirs is terrible input lag and random hang ups similar to Phones of early vintage
I’ve driven Subaru, jeep, Mazda, Chevy, ford, Toyota and ridden in the passenger of mercedes all in the past year.
Please name some cars that have standout bad/good infotainment because none of those stood out either way.
Or at least since you’re griping about what you think is a particularly bad one, name three good ones.
Tesla is probably best, Hyundai has a pretty decent one for a big manufacturer. I havent tried Rivian. Audi was ok. The rest are pretty mid, rental jeep one was really bad.
The Rivian infotainment is incredibly confusing for me. So difficult to find anything. I haven't been using it for a long time or anything, but figuring out how to access things like the AC temperature was super annoying. Everything is little icons and submenus and there's hardly any labels!
Also it's based on Google maps which I'm also not a big fan of.
Don’t worry, someone said they will be Toyota EVs…so the second worst in my experience. Improvement!
The first EV platform was a common design the wheels literally fell off it was so bad https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a40827514/toyota-bz4x-whee...
Not sure why this is being downvoted so hard. More than the ui ux experience the damn thing just freezes and needs to be restated regardless of the phone being used. Subaru outsourced their software and it shows.
If you're buying a Subaru, you're buying it because you value safety and reliability of the car, because your life/livelihood depend on it. You're not concerned about the infotainment system.
No you're not. You're buying a Subaru because how awesome was the WRX STi and how they did in WRC! Naturally I speak for the motivations of all Subaru buyers and you don't. We can't know what reasons people do buy a Subaru, but people buying them because of awesome things professional race car drivers do in modified versions of their car has got to be non-zero.
As a 25 year Subaru driver, it's a bit of one and a bit of two. I have a safe ride in the winter and do a full Costco run, and I can book it down curvy dirt roads at unsafe speeds to indulge my inner rally car driver.
Even slow cars can get a bit sideways on snow and dirt.
I was actually shocked to find that Subaru in the US was this kind of safe, maybe outdoorsy brand. I had never seen anything but Imprezas inspired by WRC before I got here. Only boy racers drove them where I grew up.
It's also a popular car in the lesbian community.
Well I for one got so used to the CVT it's not even funny any more. Every time we rent a car we get a random non-CVT car and the acceleration behavior is just so funky in comparison, I can't stand it any more.
You are buying it for the gas powered awd system. Which is like the only thing they did well. They have zero advantage or brand value in the EV realm
They sell reliable cars with a good AWD system and drivetrain and decent ground clearance.
If they sold reliable PHEVs or even BEVs with 220mm+ ground clearance and some branding around torque and traction control, and they had any kind of advantage over Toyota in that niche, they'd probably do alright in the "I don't want a Land Cruiser BUT" market.
(Yeah, yeah, EJ head gaskets, just don't buy anything with an EJ series engine.)
in theory EVs would be ideal for off-roading. Low end torque and the ability to control the motors independently. I think something like the Mercedes portal axles attached to electric motors would be amazing.
Yes but that’s inherent to the platform and needs to be controlled really well with software which is not something the brand is good at. They had great mechanical awd systems that are not relevant to this type of design
> If you're buying a Subaru, you're buying it because you value safety and reliability of the car
If I want that, why wouldn’t I buy Toyota/Honda?
Well, historically Subaru hits a different market segment than Toyota/Honda.
This curious bit is that it was 'You want something between a Toyota/Honda and a Lexus/Acura, but closer to the capability of a Jeep'. Where it's more curious, is that the modern Subaru hybrids are actually better at off-roading than the new Jeep Cherokee hybrid.
Why is that? Well at least IMO it's cause Subaru sticks to their guns, their hybrid system sticks to what they have always tried to do versus the Jeep doing, at least AFAIK, the same sort of 'AWD' hybrid setup of most hybrids, where the rear wheels are electric only and you have to wait for the computer to decide to apply Any power.
Interestingly, The closest hybrid AWD design I'm aware of to what Subaru is doing, is Ford with the AWD HF55 on the Maverick, in that case they are doing it to also help make sure it can meet the needs for 4K towing.
It's not as efficient, but it is at last consistent from a branding execution strategy. Definitely moreso than Jeep who has watered down everything they sell so much it's... who knows anymore.
Stelantis turned Jeep into a lifestyle brand. They're milking as much money out of the brand as they can. I don't know how they think this will play out in the long term, but it seems like companies these days aren't thinking about the long term.
To be fair, the Subaru Solterra is a rebadged Toyota bz4x, so I suppose you basically are buying a Toyota?
That's part, I think not to dissimilar from a jeep, people buy them for the "lifestyle". Plenty of people take them off road, but plenty also like the idea that they could go off road.
I stopped buying Subaru and started buying Toyota specifically for the reasons you listed and because Toyota (and Honda) make more reliable cars that hold their value longer. Used car depreciation curves tell the only story I need to read before purchasing a car.
Nowadays, a Subaru is just a cheaper Toyota.
German source: https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/verkehr/keine-verbrenner...
(Subaru marketshare is already fairly small in Europe, but an interesting data point imho as global electrification continues)
Related:
Europe EV sales rose 70.3% in September, 32.6% of market share - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50155291 - October 2026 (167 comments, as of this comment)
EV Sales Are Booming in Europe with Gasoline at $10 a Gallon - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49870928 - September 2026 (150 comments)
Europe EV Sales BEVs Jump 50% & Reach 26% Market Share - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49147450 - August 2026 (188 comments)
Tracking:
https://ember-energy.org/data/ev-sales-tracker/
https://robbieandrew.github.io/carsales/?lang=en&freq=monthl...
https://ourworldindata.org/electric-car-sales
good riddance - subaru ICEs are mediocre at best, totally overrated fanboy junk
- a subaru forester owner who wanted to like the vehicle but is tired of oil leaks and counting the days before a head gasket lets go