#All-electric

While this year’s L.A. Auto Show will be the location in which Subaru shows its new all-electric Solterra on this side on the pond, the new EV – developed in conjunction with Toyota – popped up in an official capacity at a reveal event in Japan. Save for having its steering wheel on the opposite side of the cabin, the machine you see here will be much like the one appearing next week in Los Angeles.

It also looks a lot like its Toyota cousin – much more so than some industry observers expected.

You’ll notice an intentional and obvious use of the word ‘some’ in that headline. At the COP26 global climate summit currently being held in Glasgow, a handful of automakers and two dozen countries committed to an agreement calling for the end of fossil fuel vehicles by 2040 or earlier.

Headline signatories include the likes of Ford, GM Volvo, and Mercedes – along with reps from places such as Canada, the U.K., and Sweden. Not everyone chose to jump on board, however, including a couple of major world powers and two of the planet’s largest car companies.

Automakers love a good teaser campaign, despite their propensity for giving away some of the good secrets like a movie trailer that drags on too long. Subaru has jumped on this marketing bandwagon for their upcoming Solterra, which is both an all-electric compact crossover and the company’s first EV.

Playing a riveting game of I Spy with this teaser photo, it’s safe to say the Solterra will fit in Subaru showrooms quite comfortably.

It’ll surprise exactly zero percent of our readers that automakers have gone all-in on electric SUVs and crossovers. That news continues apace, with Kia showing a ghostly image of its upcoming EV9. Set to fully appear as a concept car within the next month, there’s a strong possibility it’ll share much with its corporate cousin Hyundai Ioniq 7.

Lordstown Motors announced on Monday that they had exceeded 100,000 pre-orders for their Endurance light-duty, all-electric pickup, slated to begin production in September.

The previous-generation all-electric Nissan Leaf (technically “LEAF,” but that acronym sends my MacBook Air into a snit befitting Peter Frampton), with toenail clippings for headlights and a face only a mother could slug, has historically done very well for itself, selling well over 100,000 units in America since its introduction eight long model years ago.

For 2018, the Japanese automaker set out to prove an all-electric car doesn’t have to look like a science experiment. In the past, new models were denoted by the holy trinity of longer, lower, and wider. In the EV sphere, that trio takes the form of longer (range), lower (charge times), and wider (infotainment screens).