Remember the Subaru BRZ / Toyota 86 that the two automakers developed together but marketed under their own badge? It seems that the two Japanese people liked this cooperation and they have decided to develop another car together. Now it is fashionable to sell an electric car and the Subaru Solterra / Toyota bZ4x is just such a car. We have received a Subaru Solterra for our 1000km electric car test courtesy of AD REM Auto.
Generally interesting. Toyota is so resistant to electrification that a large number of electric car enthusiasts automatically have a negative image of an electric car made by this brand, despite what this car actually is. My surprise was big and quite pleasant, when I realized in the first minutes behind the wheel of this car that Toyota has created a very coherent electric car even without wanting to.
But what kind of car is this and what does it have to compete with? This is the right time to decipher the bZ4x name. “bZ” stands for Toyota’s “Beyond zero” zero-emission car vision, “4” stands for Toyota RAV4’s car size and “X” means that the car is a compact crossover. Thus, this car directly competes with cars like Hyundai IONIQ 5, Volkswagen ID.4 and Škoda Enyaq IV. Thus, it is a large and roomy crossover, which will be a good choice even for not too large families.
The car is available in a front-wheel drive or all-wheel drive version, the development of which was able to shine with Subaru’s expertise. In Europe, this car is equipped with a 71.4 kWh battery (64 kWh available to the user) and can be charged with up to 6.6 kW AC or 150 kW DC chargers. This car costs from about 53 thousand euros, which is not little. At the time of writing this article, Volkswagen ID.4 has a very fierce competition in terms of price, which has a (dumped) share price of around 47 thousand euros. We deduct another 4,500 euros of state aid and get a very interesting final price. Well, back to the test car.
The visual aspect is, of course, very subjective, but I really like this car. From the side, it may not be too expressive (its big plastic wheel arches are particularly eye-catching), but the optics in front and back make this car neat.
The interior of this car may look unusual, but in practice everything is fine. Only the driver cannot drive with his legs wide apart, because the center console is very wide and his right leg will always hit there. People’s Soc. in the networks it was indicated that the steering wheel seems small and, like we have seen in French cars, it lies in the lap. It is roughly so, and I expect that taller (over 1.90m) drivers may have to raise the steering wheel so that it covers the front instrument panel. With my 1.86 m, both displays were clearly visible and there were no problems with steering either. The steering itself is rather stiff, because the car is equipped with a whole safety system of sensors that are very noticeable in everyday driving. The system that takes care of determining the driver’s attention “disrupts” the most. It simply beeps all the time when you look out the side window or at the on-board computer for a few seconds. The face of this car must always be facing the road. Nothing can really be blamed here.
The front and rear seats are not overly ergonomic or complicated, but they do their job and even after driving 1000km I didn’t feel any distinct discomfort. And even though this demo car had a panoramic roof, the head didn’t hit the ceiling like it did in my previous test with the Nissan Ariya. By the way, this car has a fabulously comfortable center console with extra wide elbow support and storage underneath. Very practical performance!
I could sit comfortably behind me in the back and there was enough space for both my legs and my head. In this car, we will be able to drive longer distances both in the front and in the back.
I would also like to dedicate words of appreciation to the luggage compartment. It is wide, with a large opening, and thus we will be able to go shopping with this car. Under the flat floor we have another separate compartment for cables and other stuff.
The charging port for this car is located on the left side of the car at the front. I wouldn’t say that it will always be the most convenient place and I still think that the charging port should be at the front or back of the car as much as possible, so that we can get closer to the charging cable if necessary. The car has a built-in 6.6 kW AC charger, which pales in comparison to most competitors, but at least the 150 kW power of the fast DC charger should be sufficient for optimal charging with the ever-increasing supply of fast chargers in Latvia. If I had experienced various charging stability problems with other cars, the Subaru Solterra connected stably to Eleport and Viršu chargers in our test and only had to struggle a little with the “slow” emobi station. I also experienced 150 kW charging, but it didn’t last long and around the 75% charging level, the car reduced the charging power below 50 kW. In practice, this means that we can shut down and move on. I did not like the fact that the car is very uninformative about the charging process in its displays and does not show the charging capacity. Just like the battery charge level in percent and the time it takes to fully charge.
Key insights from a 1000km drive with a Subaru Solterra
During the 1000 km trip, I charged the car four times, devoting exactly 2 hours to it. The recharges made during the trip cost me 39.43 euros. The charging process is stable with Eleport and Viršu chargers, but the emobi station was more clumsy and I made the connection with a second or third pass. And even then, charging was slow, at around 30kW. In these 2h 40min, the car was loaded with 131.8 kWh of energy with an average charging capacity of 65.90 kW. Technically, this car is able to provide fast charging up to 150 kW, and at least in Riga, there are already more and more such chargers. Half an hour with such a charger and the car has got at least 200 kilometers of mileage. Not bad at all! The car ended this trip with an average energy consumption of 17.6 kWh per 100 km. Considering the size and weight of the car, this is not a bad indicator. It also meets Subaru’s promised consumption and in this sense the car is quite accurate. I also had no significant problems to understand how long it will take to dry and how far we will go with this car. It is very predictable. In one fell swoop, we will be able to drive 300 km steadily with this car in the summer. The car is roomy and comfortable enough for longer trips with the whole family and belongings. Driving the Subaru Solterra is easy – it drives and steers predictably and comfortably. Only with time does the face recognition (detection of attention) function of an overzealous driver become annoying. In the first half of the trip, the adaptive cruise control was switched off twice for a moment and I did not understand the reason for this behavior of the car. After a while it started working again and I didn’t notice this problem again during the second half of the trip. The Subaru Solterra covered this test distance in 15 hours and thus ranked fourth in our results table. This is a very commendable performance, and the car did so well in large part because three of the four charging times were done at the 80kW and 160kW high-power chargers. Infrastructure is of great importance!
Afterword
The Subaru Solterra is a really nice car that I liked for its predictability and ease of use. Yes, it may not be dull in terms of design and we won’t find some unreal space technology in it, but what is built into the car mostly works well. This is a distinct “Sit and Ride!” a car to which we as drivers do not have to adapt too much and get stuck. I wish there were more such cars!
2023-08-26 16:44:55
#1000km #brauciens #Subaru #Solterra #elektroauto #video
