Subaru’s first fully-electric model receives a name
Subaru’s first electric model will be called Solterra and will be launched next year. The Solterra is an all-electric SUV in the C-segment that is based on the platform developed jointly with Toyota.
The counterpart of Toyota’s e-TNGA is officially called e-Subaru Global Platform or e-SGP for short. The development of the joint e-platform was already announced in 2019. The idea is to be able to combine modules and components to build “different types of electric vehicles”.
As already announced at the start of the cooperation, the first vehicle will be a compact SUV. Subaru has not yet disclosed any technical details. The Solterra is to be available from mid-2022 in Japan, the USA, Canada, Europe and China. The name Solterra is composed of the Latin words for sun and earth and is meant to illustrate the appreciation of nature.
This means that the reports from spring 2020 did not eventuate as planned. According to their previous plans Subaru’s first electric model should have been called Evoltis. Later in 2020, Subaru had only confirmed that a mid-size electric SUV would be unveiled in 2021, which would also come to Europe.
Toyota already unveiled the bZ4X Concept at Auto China in Shanghai last month. The vehicle is considered a near-production study of Toyota’s electric C-SUV, which is also expected to go into production in mid-2022. Apart from the “X” in the name as a reference to the electric all-wheel drive, Toyota did not give any technical data on the first model of the “beyond Zero” range.
While Toyota plans to build an entire product line on the e-TNGA – various SUVs and crossovers, a sedan or even a minivan – Subaru does not comment on other electric models based on the e-SGP.
According to an earlier report, the e-TNGA platform will use battery sizes between 50 and 100 kWh, which will be combined with two types of motors whose power range is between 80 and 150 kW. Small electric cars are to achieve a range of 300 kilometres, larger ones between 500 and 600 kilometres.
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