Subaru refuses to bet everything on EVs — and the factory floor will never look the same
The Japanese automaker is rewriting its production playbook. Yajima goes first, Indiana is next, and even the Oizumi EV plant starts with hybrids.
Subaru is making a U-turn that would have sounded unthinkable yesterday. The Japanese carmaker is retooling its plants so that combustion cars, hybrids and electric vehicles can roll down a single line — without the kind of massive overhaul that used to take months. The idea is simple and audacious at the same time: react to market mood swings and trade wars faster than rivals can blink.
Why now? Because the market has stopped behaving predictably. In the United States, where Subaru pulls in more than 70 percent of its global revenue, EV demand turned out to be far softer than the rosy forecasts promised. Add the heavier import tariffs that have already shaved roughly 227 billion yen — about €1.2 billion — off profits. In that climate, betting everything on a single technology is suicidal.
CEO Atsushi Osaki puts it bluntly: locking the company into one type of powertrain would be “the biggest risk” Subaru could take. That is why even the new Oizumi plant under construction — the site originally tied to Subaru’s first fully in-house EV — will launch with hybrids and combustion cars first. The electric ambitions are still alive. Just no longer in a hurry.
The first plant to live by the new rulebook is Yajima, north of Tokyo. From August, three different worlds will share one line: the electric Subaru Trailseeker and Toyota bZ4X Touring, the hybrid Forester and the same Forester in its gasoline guise. Indiana is next. Subaru plans to roll out the same flexible manufacturing model at its U.S. plant.
By 2030 the company wants to slash its production processes in half and save roughly 200 billion yen — about €1.08 billion. For buyers, the message is straightforward: fewer abrupt pivots, fewer sudden goodbyes to familiar engines, more choice in markets that are not yet ready to go full electric.