Boogaloo
December 8, 2025
Alex KiersteinThink of the 2026 Subaru Trailseeker as the EV SUV that the Solterra always wanted to be. Problem is, the Solterra’s still here.
You have to feel slightly bad for automakers, who have to make calls on product development years before vehicles will reach consumers. A product is greenlit in a world that seems locked into an EV transition, and emerges in a CAFE-rollback hellscape (for EVs). But there’s good news for the 2026 Subaru Trailseeker: it seems like a much better product than Subaru’s first EV, the Solterra.
It’s powerful (375 horsepower), quick (4.4 seconds to 60 mph, claimed), and it’s reasonably cheap ($39,995 MSRP before destination). The federal tax credit is gone, but this is still well below the $50,000 average car price mark. It’s bigger; six inches longer, an inch taller, and with 8.3 inches of ground clearance. That additional length is mostly in the cargo area, so now it’s basically an Outback-sized interior in a compact EV SUV body.
There’s only one problem, as I see it: This isn’t the replacement for the Solterra. The Solterra is still on sale, improved and cheaper than the Trailseeker, but clearly the same basic vehicle underpins both. And while I just said cheaper, and it is, a closer examination of what you get for $38,495 is worthwhile. The 2026 Solterra in its base form only offers 223 horsepower. The uprated XT has 338. Range is, at most, just over 280 miles.
Those numbers honestly seem fine. Even 223 ponies, with EV torque delivery characteristics, is going to feel punchy in normal driving despite 4,400 pounds of heft. What do you want, exactly?
Trailseeker offers more for a smaller jump in price than the $1,500 delta would suggest, and that’s both my opinion and also what I believe to be the analysis most consumers will apply when they go to the dealer and look at both.
$1,500 more gets you 152 more horsepower, barely any increase in weight, barely any decrease in range. And a more crossovery, SUV-ish look. More cargo area.
Am I missing something? Why would you buy a Solterra unless there was cash on the hood or you have a thing about roof rails?
So let’s back up a second and recall that for a long time, Subaru had a good thing going. The Legacy wagon sold well, at a lower price, and with some minimal changes and marketing magic, the Outback was an entirely different vehicle. An SUV. This is not a bad thing. In some ways, the Outback should be the SUV pattern. SUV characteristics and street appeal, reduced weight compared to dedicated SUVs, minimal tooling changes needed to build it and the Legacy on the same lines.
Given the shared underpinnings, the sunk cost of the major engineering, two differentiated variants of the same basic vehicle is good automaker business. I think it’s a touch-and-feel determination to see if a consumer, at a dealership, is going to feel like the Trailseeker offers enough of a unique proposition, but let’s give it the benefit of the doubt.
The real question is, even if the Trailseeker launched into an alternate timeline, in which CAFE standards were increasing and tax credits remained as solid as political backing for increased EV adoption, whether Subaru could support two similar EVs in its lineup. Certainly in this timeline, with these circumstances, it seems unlikely.
But hey, the Solterra tooling is paid for, it just got a midcycle update. Maybe Subaru can get more butts in showrooms (and maybe seats) with the Trailseeker, and some of those buyers will opt for the Solterra instead. Maybe it projects an image of a healthy EV business that can support multiple EV models. Clever marketing push, with dogs?
Maybe all of these decisions were made several years ago. I definitely feel that there are objectively bad automotive decisions—wrong product at the wrong time for the wrong reasons—but I don’t know that three years ago I wouldn’t have greenlit both vehicles for sale in 2025.
I will say this: If any Solterra-based vehicle is going to earn its keep, my money is on the Trailseeker.
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December 8, 2025
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