2026 Subaru Uncharted AWD Gives Up 451L of Boot to Model Y

There’s a big ol’ bonnet on Subaru Uncharted AWD, but no storage, no frunk, no second boot. Toyota’s engineers call the poorly packed nose a deliberate choice rather than an accident, which only makes it worse. Subaru’s third electric model costs $59,990 plus on-roads, and it’s already short of room behind that sloping rear glass, so choosing to leave the front full of fresh air takes some explaining.

It would be churlish not to begin by reminding readers that Trailseeker got a $4,000 price drop before launch, and Solterra has fallen $16,000 from pre-launch to present. The EV pricing seems wrong right out of the gate. Now, read on.

e-TNGA, badged e-Subaru Global Platform by Subaru, gets marketed as a dedicated electric platform. The drivetrain is dedicated, the architecture holding it up is loosely derived from Toyota’s decade-old dinosaur-burning TNGA layout, and was built to go down the same line as a petrol car without anybody needing smelling salts. The parts bin came with it. When Toyota walked press around the cutaway of this platform, the onboard charger in bZ4X had been lifted straight out of one of its plug-in hybrids.

On our first drive we enjoyed the way it goes, but we refused to swallow the 522km WLTP figure, which is always 20% too generous. The only real complaint against Subaru Uncharted AWD is the packaging somebody signed off in a meeting.

Above:  Subaru Uncharted Drives Brilliantly but that price

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Subaru Uncharted parked on a dusty open landscape at sunset.

Subaru Uncharted on a dirt forest track.

The Subaru Uncharted driving through dust on loose terrain.

Subaru Uncharted climbing a sandy track.

Subaru Uncharted tailgate badge.

Subaru Uncharted on loose dirt.

Subaru Uncharted in black.

The Subaru Uncharted cabin showing the dashboard and central touchscreen.

ABOVE: 2026 Uncharted

Subaru Uncharted AWD and the Bones of a Petrol Car

Toyota’s engineers say the short front end and the missing frunk were deliberate, chosen to keep the nose compact. Tesla, and plenty of other ground-up EVs, turned that same space into a second boot. Uncharted gives you a scattering of motor control gubbins and a load of fresh air, which leaves 403 litres at the back and nowhere at the front for cables or wet towels you would rather not put on the carpet.

The floor is flat above, and underneath it shows her naughty knickers once again. The battery is a flat liquid-cooled pack bolted under the floor, with a shallow tunnel down the middle to keep the high voltage cables out of harm’s way, so the pack isn’t the problem. The rear seat is the problem, because it’s cramped when Chinese EVs of the same size give your knees room to spare for $14,000 less.

Toyota reached the same conclusion and overhauled its future EV plans around a ground-up electric architecture, which is the corporate way of conceding that the first attempt was bollocks. Tesla Model Y was drawn around a battery with nothing else invited to the meeting, and it holds 854 litres including the frunk. Subaru Uncharted AWD holds 403. Two cars of much the same size on a driveway, and one of them doubles your luggage because somebody drew it that way.

Subaru Helped Draw the Platform, Toyota Drew the Car

Subaru was in the room for e-TNGA itself, and the matched front and rear motors are there for off-road ability rather than showroom numbers. The car built on top of that platform belongs to Toyota. Subaru Uncharted AWD is a Toyota C-HR+ with a Subaru badge, altered about as far as the badge and plastic bits required. That’s the ToyoBaru arrangement doing what it has always done, the same deal that gave us BRZ and GR86, then bZ4X and Solterra, and most recently bZ4X Touring and Trailseeker. Both companies talk about cooperative development. Read the two spec sheets and this one is Toyota’s car with Subaru’s cladding, which is where we landed when the price was announced.

Being sniffy about that is a luxury Subaru can’t afford. Splitting development costs across two badges is close to the only way Japanese makers stay in the fight with the Chinese brands, and the argument is getting brutal. Jaecoo J5 EV Summit is $35,990. Geely EX5 Inspire is $45,990 with an 11kW on-board charger and 461 litres of boot. Both undercut Subaru Uncharted AWD by more than the price of a decent used hatchback.

Toyota didn’t miss the switch, it fought it. The argument that hybrids were the sensible answer and that going all-electric was a mistake came out of Japan, aimed at the governments writing the rules. When Toyota finally moved, it built its electric car on an architecture derived from a combustion one, then had to go back and start a ground-up platform anyway. Chinese makers spent those same years drawing cars around batteries and building the factories to match, which is how they got to those prices with more room inside. Uncharted isn’t a bad car. It’s a car sold at a price set by an argument Toyota already lost.

Harder to swallow is the marketing line about blending the soul of a WRX with the agility of a BRZ and the ground clearance of an Outback. What you get is a C-HR+ with 211mm of air beneath it. It is no wonder legacy brands across the world are seeing sales declining rapidly. Buyers moved on, leaving the old guard rattling their sabres to an empty parade ground.

Inside, Where Subaru Got Most of It Right

A 14-inch HD touchscreen dominates the dash, with a 7-inch driver display alongside it and, thank God, physical buttons kept for the functions you reach for while moving. The 14-inch isn’t the single clean sheet of glass Tesla hands you with its 15.4-inch panel. A letterbox strip eats the top, permanent virtual buttons and dials eat the bottom, so the usable part is a good deal smaller than the diagonal suggests. It is an old Lexus set-up in a new frock.

TOP TIP: This uses a slightly reskinned Toyota UI based on Linux NOT Android, so bugs are few.

The 7-inch driver screen doubles as head-up display and speedo, mounted so you look over the wheel rather than through it, which is Peugeot’s i-Cockpit by another name. Peugeot bashed us with it for a decade, but the binnacle wasn’t broken so the fix made it worse.

The rest of the equipment list is standard, but short of the opposition. You get: synthetic leather, a heated steering wheel, heated front and rear outboard seats, 8-way power fronts with driver memory and lumbar, reclining rear seats, ambient lighting (which I couldn’t find), dual wireless charging pads, a 10-speaker Harman Kardon system, a digital rear-view mirror, a powered tailgate, and 20-inch alloys. There’s no seat cooling, which is a peculiar thing to omit in an Australian summer when EVs costing $18,500 less will chill your back for you.

Subaru Safety Sense brings the usual suspects, and Vision Assist adds to them:

• Emergency Driving Stop System (Subaru Safety Sense)
• Adaptive driving beam (Vision Assist)
• Blind spot monitoring
• Rear cross traffic alert
• Safe exit assist
• 360-degree cameras
• Multi-terrain monitor for the rough stuff

V2L is good for 1500W at 220V, so the kettle boils at camp. Dual-mode X-Mode with grip control and downhill assist is the hardware that separates this from every city EV, and 211mm of ground clearance against Tesla Model Y’s 167mm buys a fire trail without the underbody scraping.

What $59,990 Buys Against the EV Market

It’s $59,990, which keeps it well under the Luxury Car Tax threshold, with the panoramic roof at $1,200 and the roof with two-tone paint at $2,400. Pre-orders are open, but look along the row and the value becomes a teetering prospect. Zeekr X Performance AWD is $57,900 with 365kW/543Nm, so $2,090 cheaper and 113kW stronger than Subaru Uncharted AWD’s 252kW/437Nm. Subaru’s reply is a larger 74.7kWh battery, 211mm of clearance, and off-road hardware Zeekr has no interest in fitting.

AC charging is the one place these Toyota and Subaru twins win. Subaru Uncharted AWD has a 22kW three-phase charger on board against the 11kW cap on Model Y. A three-phase destination post or a proper home wallbox fills the Subaru’s battery at double the rate. Model Y topped the sales charts in August, so that is the car most cross-shoppers are coming from. DC charging is 150kW, 10 to 80% in about 30 minutes, which is respectable rather than clever now that Model Y Long Range takes 250kW.

TOP TIP: if you’re going to DC charge, remember to precondition your battery first or you may still get snail’s pace trickles. Subaru has a switch or you can connect the navigation for preconditioning if the car’s navigation is used. That’s where the Subaru kicks serious butt, you can navigate using CarPlay like most people do, and still precondition your battery.

None of this aims at the cheapest-appliance end of the market. That buyer signed for a BYD Atto 3 at $41,490 and pocketed the difference months ago. Subaru Uncharted AWD wants the people who still enjoy driving and want something quick and high-riding that will take a dirt road on Saturday with decent all-weather ability underneath. On that brief it mostly delivers, with 5.0 seconds to 100km/h and Symmetrical AWD that grips in the wet. We liked the way it drove, but it feels heavy, and the steering feels heavy with it. Subaru weighted it up to make the car feel sporty, but heavy is just heavy, not sporty.

The compromise is paid in boot space and rear legroom every day you own the car.

Subaru Uncharted AWD

Subaru Uncharted vs the EV Market

More Subaru Stories

• Subaru Uncharted First Drive Is Good, the WLTP Claim Is Not
• Subaru Trailseeker Is the First EV Entered in a Variety Bash
• Subaru Uncharted Is a Toyota C-HR+ With a $59,990 Badge

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Written by Alan Zurvas

Alan Zurvas is the founder and editor of Gay Car Boys, Australia's leading LGBTQI+ automotive publication. Before launching GCB in 2008, Alan's automotive writing was published in SameSame.com.au and the Star Observer. With over 16 years of hands-on car reviewing experience, Alan brings an honest, irreverent voice to every review — championing value and innovation over brand loyalty.