Subaru’s New Device

Subaru – up to now – has been (along with Mazda) one of the few major car companies to steer clear of manufacturing battery powered devices. This was sensible, in view of the fact that there’s very little market for battery powered devices – only 8 percent of vehicle sales are devices and the bulk of those sales are in California, where it’s temperate in terms of the weather and extreme in terms of the political climate.

And because there’s already too much “competition” – if you want to use that word – for that “market.”

Subaru (and Mazda) have also been favorably positioned to “get away with” not manufacturing battery powered devices because neither of them manufacturer either big trucks or big SUVs and that largely exempts them from having to manufacture battery powered devices to offset what would otherwise be the dragging down of their Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) “fleet average” MPG numbers and trigger fines for non-compliance that would have to be folded into the price of the vehicles they sell.

Thereby making it more difficult to sell them.

But neither Subaru nor Mazda have had to worry as much as other brands about that. Mazda’s largest vehicle is the CX-90 crossover – which isn’t an SUV and so doesn’t fall too far out of “compliance” with CAFE. It averages 25 MPG, only 10 MPG shy of the current CAFE standard of roughly 35 MPG. And the remainder of Mazda’s models – volume sellers such as the Mazda3 sedan – comes closer to “compliance.” The latter touts 31 MPG (average) and so is very nearly “compliant.”

Note that the only current Mazda vehicle equipped with an engine that has more than four cylinders is the CX-90 – and Mazda doesn’t sell very many of these relative to its volume sellers such as the Mazda3, because the CX-90 is Mazda’s most expensive model and thus not a mass-market model. Mazda can afford to sell a relative handful of them due to the way CAFE “fleet averages” are calculated without having to worry about having to try sell battery powered devices to make up for their poor “compliance.”

Subaru’s similar.

It has one large crossover, the Ascent. And while it only averages 22 MPG, other Subaru models make up for its poor “compliance.” But not enough, apparently. Because Subaru also still sells models like the BRZ sports coupe and the WRX sport sedan – and neither of these are very “compliant” and (worse, insofar as calculating CAFE “fleet averages”) they are both popular and sell well. This is a problem – for Subaru – because the more such models that sell, the worse it goes for Subaru’s “fleet average” CAFE numbers.

This probably explains why Subaru is going to try to sell a new device. Because it needs to – in order to not fall too far out of “compliance.”

This, by the way, goes just as much for the “going back” to the compliance standards that were in place back in 2020, just before Donald Trump was replaced by Joe Biden, who promptly decreed a near-doubling of them to 50 miles-per-gallon – on average, not just on the highway. Some vehicles – such as small cars – can get 40 on the highway.

But it requires at least a partial device (i.e., a hybrid) to get to 50, much less to average that.

Now Trump is back and proposes to “go back”  . . . to 2020 compliance standards. That may keep  Mazda within “compliance” but Subaru less so. Hence the unveiling – at the New York Auto Show last week – of its new battery powered device.

Or at least, the name of the device – which will apparently be Trailseeker. This is in line with Subaru’s brand image, which touts the go-anywhere capability of its all-wheel-drive vehicles. And they do. Subarus are very popular in rural areas, where the roads aren’t great and the weather is often poor.

But how far can you go when you’re driving a device? More to the point, how far away can you go – from where you can find a place to plug in – when you’re driving a device?

Keeping mind that when you’re driving a device – even one that touts say 300 miles of range – you may actually have a lot less than that if it’s cold out. 

Subaru has sold a few rebadged Toyota-made devices. The “Subaru” Soltera  is in fact a bZ4X, which is a device made by Toyota sold under the Subaru nameplate. It’s not unlikely the new device called Trailseeker will be a similar kind of device, perhaps an iteration of the Toyota C-HR+ (a great name for a device).

This brings up a question that perhaps has not occurred to Subaru: Why bother with Subaru when “Subaru” is Toyota and Toyota is Subaru, echoing the screech of Rudolf Hess? Does anyone in the business remember what happened to Plymouth when all it had was Dodges? How about Oldsmobiles that were Chevys? And Mercuries that were Fords?

Devices are devices.  How many different brands of the same things can survive?

We’re going to find out, looks like.

. . .

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