• Only average efficiency
• Low-ish total range
• Excellent dealers

What are the running costs?

The cost of charging an electric car depends on where and when you plug it in. Public charging costs are often quite high – even on par with petrol and diesel prices – but charging at home is much cheaper. Especially if you sign up to an electricity tariff aimed specifically at EV owners with cut-price off-peak rates.

Our miles per pound calculator suggests the Subaru Solterra costs 5.6 to 11.5 pence-per-mile. Our experience suggests real-world usage will cost towards the upper end of that range.   

Range and charging

The Solterra starts to come unstuck at this point. According to the WLTP figures, the car’s 71.4kWh battery is good for a range of 289 miles in Limited trim. The figure drops to 257 miles for the Touring model, courtesy of its bigger wheels.

That’s not really good enough when many of the Solterra’s direct rivals can manage well over 300 miles. And it’s matched by some smaller, considerably cheaper cars such as the Kia Niro EV and MG4 EV.  

You can at least get pretty close to the official range in the real world. Drive carefully and you should achieve efficiency of at least three miles per kilowatt hour of battery capacity. A heat pump was added as standard post launch, so the Solterra now doesn’t lose much range in cold weather – early cars were badly affected by it.

16

Servicing and warranty

Subaru’s standard three-year, 60,000-mile (whichever comes first) warranty isn’t as generous as what you get with the bZ4X – up to 10 years under Toyota’s Relax plan. Similarly, the Solterra’s battery is only covered for eight years or 100,000 miles.

Subaru’s dealers and service centres are usually family-owned and are very highly rated. Servicing costs are unlikely to break the bank.