Subaru’s Trailseeker Just Made Wards’ 10 Best List — in a Year With Zero Gas-Only Engines
The Trailseeker joined the 2026 Wards 10 Best Engines & Propulsion Systems list in its first year on sale, alongside nine other electrified winners — and not a single gas-only engine.
The Subaru Trailseeker has landed on the 2026 Wards 10 Best Engines & Propulsion Systems list less than a year after it went on sale. The bigger story is the list itself: for the first time in the award's history, none of the ten winners runs on gasoline alone.
WardsAuto's judges tested 26 nominated powertrains and scored them on power, torque, refinement, efficiency, and innovation. The Trailseeker's dual-motor setup was one of four battery-electric winners, next to the Mercedes-Benz GLC 400 Electric, the Rivian R2 Performance, and the Volvo EX60 P10. Four hybrids and two plug-in hybrids filled out the rest, with winner prices stretching from $43,035 for the Nissan Rogue Hybrid to $242,060 for the Corvette ZR1X. The timing helps Subaru, whose three EVs together made up under 3 percent of its August volume.
Subaru's own numbers are familiar by now: 375 hp from two motors driving all four wheels, 8.5 inches of ground clearance, a 74.7-kWh battery, and up to 281 miles of range. A NACS port is standard, which opens Tesla's Supercharger network, and Subaru says a 10 to 80 percent charge takes as little as 28 minutes at up to 150 kW. Battery preconditioning kicks in automatically when the car navigates to a charger, or on demand from the touchscreen, so charging speeds hold up down to 14 degrees Fahrenheit.
"The ultimate sleeper? Subaru's Trailseeker looks unassuming, yet powers through traffic like a muscle car," said Robin Warner, who runs the Wards program. He also credited the real-world range and called the price "completely reasonable."
That price is the Trailseeker's quiet advantage. The 2027 model starts at $39,995 before destination. Its platform twin, the Toyota bZ Woodland, carries the same 74.7-kWh pack, the same 375 hp, and the same 281-mile EPA rating, yet opens at $45,300 plus a $1,450 delivery fee, according to Toyota's pricing announcement in February. On paper, the Subaru buyer gets the Wards-winning powertrain for roughly $5,300 less. That gap matters more now that the federal EV tax credit is gone and buyers are comparing stickers directly; our breakdown of the five-year cost of a Toyota bZ against a RAV4 hybrid shows how thin those margins get.
The award arrives at a useful moment for Subaru's EV lineup, which has struggled to find buyers. Subaru of America sold 849 Trailseekers in September, down from 1,248 in August, for 5,610 year to date. The smaller Uncharted added 215, and the aging Solterra fell 63 percent to 163. Against a company total of 52,056 vehicles in September, the EVs remain a rounding error, even as Subaru plans the 2028 Subaru Getaway as its next electric model.
A Wards trophy won't change those numbers on its own. Subaru hasn't said whether it plans to lean on the award in advertising, and it has not announced any pricing moves for the 2027 model year beyond the unchanged $39,995 starting figure. The full 2026 winners list is on WardsAuto, and Subaru's announcement is on its media site.
