Subaru has announced plans to ramp up its electrified cars and SUVs for the US market, with multiple EV offerings coming as soon as 2025. The brand has decided it's finally time to shift its development efforts to hone in on the future powertrains for vehicles in the States.
This may come as no surprise if you follow Subaru and its strategic partner Toyota. Both have been slow to adopt EVs, and Toyota recently announced that it's finally shifting its focus as well. While working together going forward, both Japanese automakers can more easily ramp up EV production. Subaru's only EV, the Solterra crossover, rides on the same platform as Toyota's bZ4x and is assembled by Toyota.
During Subaru's recent quarterly earnings announcement, senior vice president of corporate planning at the automaker, Tomoaki Emori shared via Automotive News:
"When we look at the U.S. market situation, we will need to offer several models in our EV lineup. We have shifted our weight toward that in our development."
The VP went on to add that the US comprises 75 percent of Subaru's total global sales. In order to move forward while following US market trends and legal and environmental expectations and regulations, the electrification strategy is necessary.
Beginning around the mid-2020s' Subaru aims to begin making its own EVs in-house, alongside its ICE vehicles. However, by 2027, the automaker will have its own EV-specific assembly line in Japan. That said, it appears it still doesn't intend to produce EVs inside the US, but that could also change in the future.
This all comes on the heels of the Japanese automaker's positive news related to increased production and growing vehicle sales. In fact, Subaru announced that its operating profit quadrupled in the final quarter of 2022, to a whopping 103.2 billion yen ($782.6 million) from 22.7 billion yen ($172.1 million) in the last three months of 2021.
Now that we are moving out of the global pandemic, the chip shortage appears to have subsided, and overall supply chain concerns are beginning to ease up, Subaru expects considerable sales growth to continue going forward. The Japanese automotive brand sold around 550,000 cars in the US in 2022 and plans to sell 600,000 to 630,000 on our shores in 2023.
