Participating Subaru Dealerships [
dealership locator] have
2023 Subaru Solterra Electric Compact SUV (Premium Trim, code PED-11) available to
Lease at
$241/month for
36 months (total $8,676) plus tax and license fee from participating dealerships w/ zero down for qualified buyers. Contact your local dealership(s) to verify if this offer is available in your area.
Thanks to community member
KhalidS8701 for finding this deal.
- Note: Offer and inventory availability may vary by location.
Features:
- All-wheel-drive electric crossover
- Seats five and carries 23.8 cubic feet of cargo behind its rear seats.
- Range: 228 miles
- 0-60mph in 6.5 seconds
- 8.3" of ground clearance
- Built on Toyota's e-TGNA global battery-electric vehicle platform
Leave a Comment
Top Comments
1,194 Comments
Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.
The charitable view is that Toyota has not prioritized BEV design and production because they have stated they can get more electric miles overall by continuing their leadership in hybrid vehicles to distribute a limited amount of Lithium across a larger number of vehicles. They also are very conservative with how much of the battery you can use and how fast you can charge to ensure their reputation for bulletproof cars continues.
The less charitable view is that they are behind in EV design because they put all their eggs in hydrogen for the future and don't want EVs to succeed.
Where people are nervous about EVs are the long roadtrips they make take for pleasure and the concern about fast charging infrastructure, range, and charging speed. Even that is somewhat overstated unless you are the kind of person that never stops and pees or gets food on a road trip. I've made a 400 mile trip in my outdated EV and it added about 45 minutes to a 7 hour trip compared to what I would have done in my gas car.
For a single person, yeah, it might be difficult to recommend an EV as their only vehicle. They might roadtrip frequently enough that it's inconvenient or renting a car for trips wipes out any potential savings. For a family though, it makes perfect sense. We have an EV and a regular Outback and the EV is absolutely our principal vehicle, we put 3-4X the miles on it and avoid using the Outback unless we are going on a long trip (1-2 times a year).
You are right that EVs are still primarily for rich or at least relatively well off people. I disagree that it's virtue signaling though. EVs are incredibly practical and much cheaper to fuel if you have the means to charge at home. If you have the means to install solar power at your house, then EVs put you on the road to energy independence from public utilities and the Saudis. However, if you live in an apartment and need to rely on public charging, then yes an EV makes very little sense.
With seatbelts and airbag you could reasonably expect to survive a crash at 45 mph. I don't seen hydrogen tanks surviving that unless they put so much armor plating that the car weighs more than my mother-in-law.
Here's an eye-opening video of a van with pressurized LNG tank exploding. This happened a few years ago not far from where I live, I remember seeing it on the news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO055g6
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVeagFm
That's a Toyota video of shooting a H2 tank. No explosion. H2 tank is not the same as your average propane tank.
Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.
Subaru is too small to develop their own EV platform so they relied on Toyota to develop one (this is the same as the Toyota BZ4X).
The charitable view is that Toyota has not prioritized BEV design and production because they have stated they can get more electric miles overall by continuing their leadership in hybrid vehicles to distribute a limited amount of Lithium across a larger number of vehicles. They also are very conservative with how much of the battery you can use and how fast you can charge to ensure their reputation for bulletproof cars continues.
The less charitable view is that they are behind in EV design because they put all their eggs in hydrogen for the future and don't want EVs to succeed.
You've got it flipped. EVs are the perfect weekday/commuter cars for the vast majority of Americans. The average commute is 40 miles roundtrip, most EVs can recover 40-60 miles overnight plugged into a standard 120V outlet. Many people have longer daily commutes, but they can also charge overnight if they are able to install a level 2 (240V) charger at home. It costs me something like $0.25 to regain 50 miles overnight in GA.
Where people are nervous about EVs are the long roadtrips they make take for pleasure and the concern about fast charging infrastructure, range, and charging speed. Even that is somewhat overstated unless you are the kind of person that never stops and pees or gets food on a road trip. I've made a 400 mile trip in my outdated EV and it added about 45 minutes to a 7 hour trip compared to what I would have done in my gas car.
For a single person, yeah, it might be difficult to recommend an EV as their only vehicle. They might roadtrip frequently enough that it's inconvenient or renting a car for trips wipes out any potential savings. For a family though, it makes perfect sense. We have an EV and a regular Outback and the EV is absolutely our principal vehicle, we put 3-4X the miles on it and avoid using the Outback unless we are going on a long trip (1-2 times a year).
You are right that EVs are still primarily for rich or at least relatively well off people. I disagree that it's virtue signaling though. EVs are incredibly practical and much cheaper to fuel if you have the means to charge at home. If you have the means to install solar power at your house, then EVs put you on the road to energy independence from public utilities and the Saudis. However, if you live in an apartment and need to rely on public charging, then yes an EV makes very little sense.
That's a long "overnight"…
0.25$ to regain 50miles? At 4 miles per kwh, that's 12.5kwh… so 0.25 / 12.5, says you pay ~0.02$/kwh
Assuming EVs should be treated like a daily driver, I'll use a corolla as a stand in.
I've also driven pretty much every tesla, with doing long 10+ hour drives in X to draw from personal experience.
Basically for me, ignoring the cost of each vehicle, and looking solely at cost of range;
The X I was going about 250~ miles per fill at a super charger. I think I was going to about 65-75%. Basically when it stops 'fast' charging. I think it was coming out around 25~ bucks each charge. The X has a 100kwatt battery, or about. Assuming I charged at least half of that, since I didnt run down to lower than 10%. Super charging at the time was around 0.40/kwatt. so again it checks out I was paying around 20-23~ per stop.
On a corolla I can generally go about 500~ miles per fill. Gas is like 4.5 for me right now, so that's about ... lets say 40 dollars. Taken the number from above, I am paying the same price on EV at a supercharger vs filling at the pump.
From my personal experience with my high electrical costs (Home charging TOU plan mandatory, 0.45/kwatt avg) Seems like a wash in 'fuel' costs.
At least you've run the numbers. Whether or not an EV makes sense for someone depends on 2 main things - cost per mile driven, and less quantifiable factors such as convenience, tech etc. Cost per mile driven is going to be hyper local, and this forum spans at least the entire US mostly. I live in an area where electricity is fairly expensive when compared to gasoline (New England), if I look at my ratio of gallon of gas to kwh of electricity, its about 11:1 (roughly $3.10 and $0.28). The national average is closer to 23:1. If we consider that your average EV will have an efficiency of around 3-4 miles/kwh, that means for a breakeven on $/mile, a comparable ICE only needs to get like 33-44 mpg, which is basically what most comparably-sized ICE's are going to get. (e.g. your Corolla is going to get 32/41mpg according to the EPA estimates and I always find those to be low)
Somewhere around a ratio of 13 (my guess) is where the EV will always outperform the ICE on a $/mile refueling, that would mean (for me) that ICE would need to get more like 50 mpg (not going to happen). The further north you get from ~ 13, the more the EV makes sense because the marginal cost difference per mile driven should make the PBP (in miles) shorter.
Once the discussion passes the "which car is cheaper to drive" bar then you should consider other costs like insurance and maintenance, and finally cost to purchase. For me if the discussion is close at that point, and the PBP reasonable (say less than 50-60k miles or so) then you can think about nuance - which model you like better, what fits your needs better, etc etc - all this is provided that the form factors available in an EV drivetrain are suitable. If you need a real SUV (sorry, the Y and Mach E are not SUV's. "back in the day" we'd call those hatchbacks) or minivan, sorry there aren't really available (Toyota does offer the Sienna in a hybrid configuration)
If you want to buy a car just for the latter (tech, looks, etc who cares about cost) that's fine, but that's also a different starting premise.
In the bigger picture then you can think about price sensitivity - for me, electricity isn't as variable, but always tends to go up if it does change. Gas can be more expensive, yes, but it can also be a lot cheaper. In the past 3 years I've paid from $1.25 - $4.10 for gas. In the same time period I've paid from $0.24/kw up to $0.36 and now $0.28 for electricity. Ironically that price is mostly a function of natural gas prices, since that's where our power comes from.
Actually, lets mention the cost savings, because those are so significant, I could have my cake and eat it too. Any time I do a road trip, I can afford to rent a car if I'm that bothered by the inconvenience of charging it during my trip. In fact, thats exactly what I'm doing this weekend for the eclipse since I'll be driving out to a rural area. Not to mention, I'll be renting an SUV instead of a sedan like I have, so there will be added convenience there as well. But my $200 expense to rent the car for my 3 day trip is overshadowed by the ~$3000 a year I save in gas and maintenance. YMMV depending on what cars you're comparing, but for my needs, the car I have saves me that much, probably more even. SO yea, I can live with the annoyance of destination charging once or twice a year, or god forbid, spend a couple hundred on a rental.
That's a long "overnight"…
0.25$ to regain 50miles? At 4 miles per kwh, that's 12.5kwh… so 0.25 / 12.5, says you pay ~0.02$/kwh
Well that goes to show that there are widely varying situations across the country. I just mentioned I pay $0.28/kwh, which is high - but others are even higher, and some are free - I've heard about certain localities where overnight power is essentially free because of generation leveling or something like that. For me, I do have TOU which knocks a couple pennies off of the overnight rate but the day rate is jacked up massively. Other people it's the opposite - to the point where it's becoming economically viable to spend tens of thousands of $$ on batteries to charge overnight and run off of during the day, because the day/night rates are so drastically different.
I also always take what people say on forums with a grain of salt… saying things like "it costs me something like (insert tiny number) to charge" are almost always an over exaggeration and highly likely they haven't looked or done the math.
Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.
Leave a Comment