Subaru nears decision on where to build EVs in U.S., CEO says
TOKYO — Indiana could well become the most-favored location for Subaru to establish an electric vehicle production site in the world’s biggest economy, the Japanese automaker’s CEO said.
Subaru sees 2023 through 2028 as a key period for building up its EV sales so that it will eventually hit an annual sales target of 600,000 battery-powered vehicles by 2030 that will make up half of its global sales.
It aims to sell 400,000 of those in the United States.
The automaker is still considering where in the United States it will produce EVs, Subaru CEO Atsushi Osaki told reporters at a roundtable meeting in Tokyo on Wednesday.
The company, a fifth owned by Toyota Motor Corp., already owns a plant in Lafayette, Ind., where it has been producing Legacy and Outback models.
That site may well come out as top candidate location for the company’s EV production, Osaki said, while cautioning it has not made any final decisions on the issue and was considering a wide range of things.
“The time to make a decision is coming close,” he added, without saying whether the company was considering to build a new factory or add to or revamp existing production lines.
