AURORA | All you need to know about the 2014 Subaru XV Hybrid is that you’ll never do any of this. Everything else you should to know about the Subaru XV Hybrid is that you can.
Reykjavik, Iceland — Hybrids are creatures born from an excuse. Their justification for existence comes thanks to our unfettered consumption of finite resources for infinite purposes. Hybrids exist because we thrive on “could,” but can’t contemplate “should.” Therefore the cold, wintery, sparsely populated island of Iceland is a good place to figure out what the 2014 Subaru XV Hybrid could do then. Or something like that.
To be fair, it was their idea. But even thousands of miles away from the Rocky Mountains and home, it seems like this won’t be the only time that I’ll see a convoy of special-edition colored green Subarus. I only need to dash up the mountains to spot that on a daily basis. Not necessarily the volcano in front of my windshield.
This is the first hybrid Subaru has ever built, and for a car company that’s catered so heavily to outdoors enthusiasts, it seems a bit out of place. For every Outback on the road, there’s an equal amount of Sierra Club stickers on the back. Nonetheless, this Subaru is the first with a hybrid power train and a uber lime-green paint scheme, in case you forgot what this car is all about.
Its 0.6 kWh battery paired with a flat-four engine may seem a bit behind current-generation hybrids (the current Prius is about twice that) but its application makes the XV Hybrid remarkable. It’s the first hybrid crossover under $30,000 and the only at that price with all-wheel drive as standard. The XV Hybrid picks up where the XV Crosstrek left off, where there was plenty of room for improvement, including creature comforts such as noise deadening and steering feel.
To be sure, the gas-powered XV Crosstrek has been a meteoric sales success for Subaru. After selling more than 50,000 models (many more than even I imagined) the Crosstrek was the perfect canvas for creating Subaru’s first hybrid. (As an aside, I imagine Subaru’s sales team realized that plunking a hybrid battery into a base Impreza first would have been a drop in the sea of sedan hybrids, but a hybrid crossover would help their first entry gain footing in the overall market.)
The new car’s aim isn’t to convert Crosstrek buyers to tack on an additional $2,000 or so to their XV’s, but rather to attract buyers looking for a hybrid already, but unsure about buying anything that isn’t called a Subaru for their first new-car purchase. To that end, Subaru has pegged sales for the hybrid to be only around 20 percent of Crosstrek buyers in the initial offering that begins in early 2014. That number, I’m sure will be much bigger in bread-and-butter states for Subaru such as Colorado, Utah and the New England states.
For $25,995 to start, the Crosstrek’s base 148 hp engine is paired with a nickel-hydride battery stuffed where the spare tire normally goes to up the power rating to 160 hp system-wide. Weight gain for the hybrid is kept at a beefy 300 lbs. or so over normal Crosstrek conditions, which means the XV Hybrid isn’t a speed demon compared to the already relatively slow XV Crosstrek anyway. Interestingly, the steering ratio in the XV Hybrid has been quickened to 14.0:1, quicker than the outgoing speedier Impreza WRX and WRX STI. Steering speed is nice, but it’ll likely be the closing speed that saves you. Transmission options have been limited to a continuously variable transmission only, understandably because of the hybrid drive system and premium placed on fuel economy. The XV hybrid manages 29/33/31 mpg in city/highway combined, up incrementally from the Crosstrek’s 25/33/28 mpg EPA estimate.
It’s easy to get caught up in the specifics of the XV Hybrid here, but it’s here in the wilderness of Iceland that the car shows its true capability. We’re mashing the throttle in waist-deep snow looking for a hut with no electricity. It’s hard to figure mileage when high-centering happens not only for the XV Hybrid, but also for the Land Rovers outfitted with balloon tires and snow plows ahead of us. Subaru officials tell us that we’re giving the cars more than they bargained for in the Icelandic wild, a notion that seems odd considering it was their idea to drive into the center of one of the windiest, northernmost places in Europe in November.
“Remember to keep momentum through the snow,” our Icelandic guides remind us over a radio outfitted with a top red-colored button to “call in the helicopters” should this tundra turn foul and force us into a Donner Party-type situation. “Don’t push that button,” we’re told before we set off. One of the guides has been affectionately dubbed “MacGuyver” for his ability to craft anything from everything. Truth is, if a coat hanger comes out to solder something back into the XV Hybrid to keep me alive, I’m hitting the red button instantly.
The roads here are brutally punishing, and far beyond anything in any Subaru commercial we’ve ever seen stateside. Fording icy rivers that come up to the doors, plowing through drifts and crawling up volcanoes isn’t exactly a routine that nearly all Subaru owners will put their cars through. Detail: The XV Hybrid has active grille shutters that close to maximize mileage, but I couldn’t notice considering the bow wave we were pushing crossing a Icelandic river more than 20 times during my driving stint into the hinterlands. And the XV Hybrid has an 8.7-inch ground clearance. Yes, the river got that deep in some places.
Passing traffic seemed genuinely shocked that we were pushing along in a passenger-grade small crossover through conditions — I can only imagine — that are similar to the moon. But the point here was that the XV Hybrid is the only hybrid that Subaru could have built out of the gate. It’s a hybrid that doesn’t compromise on capability, even if that means that its gains are minimal above the gas model.
Or rather, it’s the hybrid that doesn’t have an excuse for not going everywhere a Subaru should. I imagine Subaru could sell a million of these things here.
Aaron Cole is managing editor of the Aurora Sentinel. Reach him at acole@aurorasentinel.com