Report: Toyota To Build Subaru Three-Row EV in Kentucky
Toyota and Subaru have partnered on a few vehicles in recent times, including the BRZ/GR 86 and bZ4X/Solterra twins. The brotherly love is expected to continue with a new three-row SUV in 2025. Toyota will build the vehicle in its Kentucky factory, where its own electric three-row will be produced.
Toyota’s variant is expected to wear the bZ5X name, and the automaker will start building the Subaru version shortly after its own. Its Kentucky facility is getting a multi-million-dollar retooling to support EV production and will eventually source batteries from another Toyota plant in North Carolina.
Subaru’s EV strategy involves four new crossovers by 2026, so this report jives with that timeline. Neither automaker’s current EVs are eligible for U.S. federal tax credits because they’re both built in Japan, making moving EV production to a domestic location the most logical next step for both. Several other automakers are considering or are in process with similar plans to meet the tax credit requirements.
Toyota has recently accelerated its EV development efforts but remains committed to a range of electrified vehicles, including hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and alternative fuels. While it presses forward with its bZ electric vehicles, Toyota is also preparing to release its first hybrid Tacoma model and has just rolled out the impressive new Prius.
[Image: Subaru]
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Chris grew up in, under, and around cars, but took the long way around to becoming an automotive writer. After a career in technology consulting and a trip through business school, Chris began writing about the automotive industry as a way to reconnect with his passion and get behind the wheel of a new car every week. He focuses on taking complex industry stories and making them digestible by any reader. Just don’t expect him to stay away from high-mileage Porsches.
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Likely a smart move on the part of Subaru and hardly unprecedented. Subaru is not disrupting their current very profitable production lines at SIA in Lafayette with this forthcoming product. Toyota assembled Camry vehicles in Subaru's Indiana plant for several years and left without much issue when Subaru needed the extra output for its own vehicles. Should this new product not meet the production goals expected the same could be done by Subaru still without production interference of its mainstream products.
Why doesn't TOyota EFFING BUY STUPID SUBARU ALREADY, instead of continuing to FOOL the consumer by selling Subarus made by TOyota?
Has Toyota given up trying to figure out names for their EVs? bZ5X, seriously?
Toyota will buy /absorb Subaru some day.