Subaru Forester 2020: Why the hybrid Forester is boxing outside of its class. Detailed expert review

CarExpert

Did you know that Toyota owns part of Subaru? So the all-new Subaru Forester Hybrid should be an excellent car to drive, right? Not quite! Paul reviews the 2020 Subaru Forester Hybrid S, which now has an e-boxer engine. Fancy.  Read the full review: https://www.carexpert.com.au/review/2020-subaru-forester-hybrid-s-review/   Skip Ahead: Intro: 00:00 Exterior: 00:55 Interior: 02:52 Infotainment: 04:34 Features: 07:29  Practicality: 09:33 On the Road: 14:40 Verdict: 20:01  We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.  Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.  Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1  You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.  Finally, we want this channel to grow with your support and feedback. If there's anything you don't like or would like to see us change, we'd love to hear from you! #review #subaru #forester  Follow us on social media to see what we're up to and to ask any questions!  CarExpert: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarExpertAus Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/CarExpertAus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carexpert.com.au  Paul Maric: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulMaric Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/PaulMaric Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/PaulMaric  @Subaru @SubaruAustralia

Transcript

00:00 G'day, I'm Paul. I have some really, really exciting news for you today.

00:03 Subaru's first ever Forester Hybrid is just behind me.

00:06 [crickets chirping]

00:08 Okay, well, it's not that exciting, but I think Subaru is excited because it is the first time

00:12 they've been able to put an e-boxer, which is a pretty cool sounding name, into this Forester for Australia.

00:18 Now, this car here is the top-spec Forester Hybrid. It's called the S model, and it's just under 46 grand.

00:24 You can see the pricing for the rest of the Forester range down below.

00:27 Now, I found something interesting out while researching this car, and that is that Toyota owns about 10% of Subaru.

00:33 So that means the hybrid running gear in this car should be pretty good, right?

00:36 I don't know. We're gonna find that out today.

00:38 Now, if you want to skip ahead, you can use the time codes up there, or alternatively, if you're on YouTube,

00:42 just scroll down to the description, and then you can press the link so that will take you to other parts of this review.

00:47 I would also love if you guys could hit the subscribe button and also press the bell icon.

00:51 That's going to tell you every single time we drop a new car video on YouTube.

00:55 Let's talk styling. So when I was younger,

00:57 it was always the trendy people that had the Forester, and when you see a Forester,

01:02 you know that that person is adventurous. They go outside,

01:04 they go kayaking, and they do fun things that a lot of us normal inside people don't.

01:08 But anyway, you can get the Forester in eight different colors, and I think they've done a good job with the design here.

01:13 Often Subaru, I don't know, with some models, they completely revolutionize the design and change it completely,

01:18 but the Forester just seems to have been a step change. They've never really gone crazy with different designs.

01:24 I mean, you remember stuff like the old Tribeca. That thing was just a complete mishmash of design, but this looks pretty good.

01:30 I like the chrome highlights. It sort of sets off well with the paint there.

01:33 You've got the proudly worn Subaru emblem here, doubles as a base for the radar sensor as well.

01:39 The cameras around the car. It is a really rugged looking car, but still has a bit of luxury styling to it.

01:45 So have a look at these headlights. You have LED daytime running lights and then full LED main beam.

01:49 This gives you excellent projection at nighttime if you're out in the country.

01:53 You don't want halogen lights. You need these full LED set up so that you can actually see nice and far.

01:59 It will make your driving a lot more safer. Now, have a look around the side here. 18-inch alloy wheels.

02:04 You've got fairly chubby tires there, which means you can do a little bit of light off-roading.

02:08 That's what Subaru has always been known for with their permanent all-wheel drive system.

02:11 It's kind of an all-terrain tire, but has a road focus to it.

02:14 So it's more at home on the road, but if you do go down a couple of muddy tracks, it's not going to get you completely stuck.

02:19 I love these satin chrome mirrors. You've got a set of roof racks there.

02:23 Come around to the back here. You've got that e-boxer badge.

02:25 That is basically a flat four-cylinder naturally aspirated petrol engine with the hybrid, parallel hybrid gear attached to it.

02:33 Now the interesting thing here is if you get a towing pack with this car,

02:37 you can only tow 1,200 kilos with a braked trailer.

02:39 You have to go for the non-hybrid version to be able to tow 1,500.

02:43 So you are going to be limited there and I'll also run you through shortly the tank,

02:47 which is much smaller in this car and ironically gives you less range than the non-hybrid versions.

02:52 Okay, interior styling. And in traditional Japanese fashion, there is a lot going on here for the driver.

02:57 There's lots of buttons on the steering wheel. You've got two information displays, an infotainment screen.

03:02 So there is a lot to get hold of, but once you get used to it, it's actually all very straightforward to use, which is good news.

03:09 Now, what about the way that it all looks though?

03:11 They have gone with piano black around the place and I'm really not a fan of piano black because it scratches

03:16 very easily and like even down there, it's just hard to keep that stuff clean and scratch-free.

03:22 You kind of have to buff it every now and then and it seems a bit pointless to have it here.

03:25 They do have this soft touch material around the place and my favorite test is our hardness test.

03:31 This is a durometer. It's on the shore scale and it goes from 0 to 100 on the hardness,

03:37 where 0 is soft, 100 is hard. Let's see what that dashboard is like.

03:41 Okay, so it's around the 60 mark. We'll see what this center console is like. That feels nice and soft.

03:51 Yeah, that's impressive. So that's about 26, 27.

03:54 And what we're going to do, we saw your comments about getting like a table of all the different cars.

03:59 We're going to work on that in our future reviews, so you can actually see how this compares to other cars.

04:03 But from memory, that is actually a really good combo there.

04:05 I love the sort of fake stitching they have here. The seats are a really nice design as well.

04:11 They've got perforations in there. They're finally heated. For some reason, Subaru couldn't get heated seats into the Forester.

04:16 That's now been solved. So it is a nice layout.

04:18 But what about build quality? Japanese are known for building quality cars. It's not quite the case here. Look at that.

04:24 That's a little bit loose and it's a bit loosey-goosey as well.

04:28 So, I don't know. It feels like this isn't as solid or as sturdy as previous generations of the Forester.

04:34 Let's talk infotainment. If you're buying this car for a family,

04:37 you're going to want to have a very simple to use infotainment system and Subaru has done a good job with this.

04:41 It's an 8-inch unit and it's a touchscreen as well. Everything's controlled here.

04:45 You can see shortcut buttons down the bottom for radio, map, apps, media and then your key controls for tuning and then volume as well.

04:52 This is what the home screen looks like. You have all of your shortcuts there to the main functions.

04:56 You can then add your own shortcuts and there's three layers of screens you can add them to.

05:01 Up the top there, you'll see your Bluetooth status, the battery of your phone and also how much reception you have.

05:06 We'll quickly dive through these menus here. Phone. This is a very basic phone menu.

05:11 What I love here though is the ability to redial. Often with these systems, if you're on the move,

05:16 you need to go through your recent history, find the person that you want, click on them.

05:19 Whereas here, you can just redial. So that is a handy function and then it's backed up by a voice recognition system.

05:25 That works really well. It is better than the outgoing generation of Forester and it easily recognizes your voice.

05:30 You can also hook up to Apple CarPlay or Android Auto and that displays nicely on the screen there as well.

05:36 When you do use the voice recognition through those systems,

05:39 it'll use your phone to communicate with the cloud so you're getting better clarity on the voice recognition as well.

05:44 This will also display your messages when allowed through the phone, which is a really good feature too. Map menu.

05:48 This is the map display. You can see here that it's a it's a sort of fairly basic map.

05:52 It is a little bit laggy. So when you're zooming in and out,

05:55 it's not the fastest system in the world and we'll try and put an address in here.

06:01 We'll see how quick that is. We'll pop in Melbourne Airport.

06:03 Okay, that's going really nice and fast.

06:08 Okay, it's taking a little while there to search. Still searching.

06:15 Okay, there we go. So that's worked. It takes a little bit of time to do that,

06:20 but it gets there in the end. You can also do it through the voice recognition system.

06:23 Back on the home screen there, you've got the media menu. This is Bluetooth audio streaming.

06:28 You've got two USB connections there as well, plus auxiliary and you also have a CD player.

06:32 This is starting to disappear from a lot of cars.

06:34 So Subaru has retained that, which is a handy feature to have if you have some old school

06:38 mixers. Radio, you've got FM, AM, DAB, digital radio. One of my gripes here though is having to

06:44 go through bands to find the stations you're after. This displays everything in one giant list,

06:49 which is very handy, although it seems to break the alphabetical order. It goes here from M to V

06:55 to A again. So it is strange that it divides it in that way instead of showing you everything

07:00 in alphabetical order. If we then jump over to the apps menu, this is where you pair CarPlay

07:05 and Android Auto. And then finally, you've just got the car settings. So this is all very basic

07:09 information for the car. You can connect to Wi-Fi to do software updates. If you have Wi-Fi

07:15 connection in the garage at home, this is a good way to keep the car up to date.

07:19 So outside of that, this is a fuss-free system. It's very easy to use. And while you're on the

07:24 move, you won't be taking your eyes off the road constantly because you have the backup of a voice

07:28 recognition system as well. Enough about the infotainment system. What else are you getting

07:31 for your $46,000 - $47,000 investment? So it starts down here with dual zone climate control.

07:37 There's only two zones in the car, so you won't get a third zone for the second row. I love this

07:41 feature though. So press that button and it brings up the side camera. This is handy for parking near

07:46 kerbs. You're able to see how close you are to make sure you don't gouge those rims. And then

07:51 you also have a front view as well. So instead of a traditional 360 degree view camera, Subaru has

07:57 gone a little bit different with it. And I think it works. It's sort of fairly easy to see and it

08:01 moves with the wheels and stuff. So you can see exactly what's going on around the car. In terms

08:05 of safety technology, it comes with what Subaru calls EyeSight. It's pretty much just an AEB

08:10 system that uses these two cameras. It's able to detect pedestrians, which is handy. The radar

08:13 cruise control, which is controlled on the steering wheel here. And then you have a set of

08:17 LED lights ahead of the driver too, that tells you when it's locked onto a target. And I love

08:21 the screen that appears on here. It's got like this laser focus onto the car in front and it

08:25 tells you whether you're locked onto that and how close it is to the driver. The top spec model

08:30 comes with an eight speaker Harman Kardon sound system. What I don't like though is the lack of

08:35 an auto dimming rear vision mirror. This thing's from like the 80s or the 90s. I'm surprised that

08:40 Subaru hasn't actually integrated a more modern version of this reverse view mirror. There is one

08:44 thing I need to spend just a little bit more time explaining here. When you hop into the car,

08:49 there's a set of cameras here that detect your face and do a facial recognition sweep. Now

08:55 there's two purposes behind that. The first is a driver attention warning. If you're getting drowsy,

08:59 the car will be able to detect that and it will give you a series of warnings to tell you you need

09:03 to pull over and have a rest. What it also does though is it differentiates your face from other

09:07 drivers and it allows you to store your favourite settings such as climate control, radio settings,

09:12 also the seat settings. So when you do get into the car, if you've hopped in after your partner

09:15 and perhaps they sit close to the steering wheel, the chair will actually go backwards for your

09:20 seating position along with the mirrors. So it is a pretty clever function and I like that it's a

09:24 different system to just relying on a key. It means that you can just keep the key in your pocket and

09:29 then jump in the car. It'll detect your face, adjust all your settings and then you just hit

09:32 the road. So practicality and storage. How does it look here in the Forester? It is impressive but

09:37 there are some things they could improve. So let's look at phone storage first. You've got a slot up

09:41 the front here but if you've got a big phone like I do, it doesn't actually fit there. There's no

09:46 wireless phone charging either. Let's see if it fits there. Nope. Fits in the cup holder but nowhere

09:52 else. So cup holders, that works well. You've also got cup holders in the door so you can fit a full

09:57 size bottle in there plus other bits and pieces next to it. Storage in the centre here. You have

10:01 a coin tray which is handy and then a deep storage box with a 12-volt outlet in there,

10:06 two USB outlets up the front and another 12-volt as well. Another interesting thing, have a look

10:11 at this. This is the glove box. There's not a great deal of room in there once you have the manual and

10:15 all the other bits and pieces you're going to throw in there but have a look at this. This is

10:18 where they've put the tyre pressure sensor set button. Kind of buried it away randomly instead

10:23 of putting it next to the driver's knee where you have another bank of buttons. So very odd place to

10:27 have it. What about comfort? The seat is comfortable but it is a bit firm. There isn't a bolster

10:32 adjustment on it so it's just firm and it doesn't really sort of feel comfortable if you're going to

10:37 be spending a long time in here but the seats are electrically adjustable and the seating position

10:42 itself is really nice. The steering wheel fits nicely in the hand with those paddle shifters

10:46 right there. We're in the back of the Forester but before I shut my door let me show you this.

10:50 Most other cars when you're getting in and out the door will open up to sort of around there

10:54 somewhere and you've got to clamber your way out but the Forester opens up to almost 90 degrees.

10:59 You can see from that angle there the door is almost completely open and that means loading

11:03 child seats in and even loading kids in is going to be a much easier process so that is a really

11:08 cool feature. What about the rest of this cabin here? The top spec comes with this pretty awesome

11:12 looking sunroof. I know when I was a kid I would have loved to have something like that in the back

11:16 of the car as we're driving through a forest or doing a long distance journey. My opinion is, and

11:21 let me know in the comments below if this is right, but do you get over sunroofs? I find that whenever

11:25 we're testing a car with a sunroof if it's summer, especially here in Australia where you've got that

11:29 searing sun, if you do have it open you end up with half an arm that's burnt and the other half

11:34 that isn't because that's where the sun is coming through. So anyway, let me know in the comments

11:37 below. What about legroom? Well you don't have a massive driveline hump which is handy. You have

11:42 masses of toe room which is great, heaps of knee room and lots of headroom as well even with this

11:48 sunroof here. So this is a pretty good space even for adults. Rest of the features in the back here,

11:52 you've got a litany of matte pockets here, so dual tiers with a divider in the middle. You have two

11:57 2.1 amp USB charges, a center armrest here as well, two cup holders with a bit more piano black

12:03 just because we didn't have enough of that. Now this is fascinating, most other cars come with a

12:09 lap sash seatbelt that you just pull down and clip in. Watch this though, for the Forester you have

12:14 to DIY your own seatbelt. So you have to get this bottom section, it plugs into here and then once

12:20 your person is in there you then plug it into here. But the problem is when you're done with

12:26 that and you want to put it away, that can just sit there like that. But to actually get this off

12:31 you have to use the other part of this seatbelt to unplug it and then you have to kind of tuck

12:36 it away on your own and it just sort of dangles about there. So I don't know, not sure I love the

12:42 way that works. But anyway, you can also recline your seats but instead of there being a control

12:47 down the side, you have to use this lever which I've got here on my side as well. You pull that

12:51 and then it allows that seat to recline a little bit which is kind of handy if you want to kick

12:56 back and relax a little bit. There isn't a huge amount of recline available on it though.

12:59 Okay, if you've driven a previous generation Forester you'll know how slow the boot was.

13:04 Have a look at this power tailgate. The speed has improved by about 30 percent,

13:08 so that is flying up now which is handy. Okay, in terms of cargo space, a little over 500 litres

13:13 with the second row in place. Have a look at this, you have storage under here and the ironic part

13:17 is that despite the fact this has an extra battery in it, this has more boot room than the

13:22 non-hybrid version and that's because the battery which is just there is eating into the space where

13:27 your spare tyre used to be. So instead this comes with a tyre repair kit which is that thing right

13:33 there. It's a can of goo and then a compressor that pushes it into the hole in your tyre. Works

13:38 okay most of the time but there are parts of the tyre that you cannot fix with that system,

13:42 but this is a good hidey hole if you do have some valuables you don't want anyone to see.

13:46 This is a really clever system. So that's the cargo blind. It is the standard type, so it has

13:51 this spring mechanism on it and then it clips into position, but often you have this space here with

13:56 cars that have reclining second rows and they've got this clever system. So you have two levels of

14:00 adjustability. If your seats are pulled back you can have this here so you can't see through from

14:05 the outside. Then finally if your seats are in their upright position you push it all the way

14:08 to the front and that covers that gap so you can't see any valuables that you have in the back and

14:13 that then just goes into position. Now let's see how our luggage fits into here. We've got the

14:17 laptop bag off to the side. This will fit fine but I just want to give you an indication of exactly

14:23 how much room there is. Now these seats also act as meat tenderizers. Let me show you what I mean.

14:29 So with one pull of this they fall down with some absolute force. So if you've got a chicken fillet,

14:34 stick it under there and it'll be absolutely pulverized. You've also got that subwoofer

14:38 there as well for that Harman Kardon sound system. So we've hit the road in the Forester but

14:44 there's a problem. This has happened in the last three Japanese cars we've had. Watch this. If I

14:49 try and turn left, I can't. My elbow gets stuck there on the center console and then when I try

14:56 and turn left I can't go beyond that. It is seriously bizarre. It only happens in Japanese

15:01 cars and the center console just doesn't have enough room between the steering wheel and the

15:05 top of it to actually make a proper turn. What is an e-boxer? Well this is Subaru's 2-litre

15:11 petrol engine and I'll run you through the figures in just a second but what they've done is added a

15:15 parallel hybrid system. That means that it can either run entirely on EV and that's up to around

15:21 40 kilometres an hour as it accelerates. It can either run entirely on internal combustion or it

15:26 can do a combination of both and when it's both of them they can team up to give you a little bit

15:30 of extra torque. Here's the weird thing though, Subaru doesn't quote what the actual combined

15:35 torque and power figures are. So the 2-litre engine produces 110 kilowatts of power and 196

15:40 newton meters of torque. The electric motor is 12.3 kilowatts and 66 newton meters so that means

15:46 when I hit the throttle they both combine to do not a whole lot unfortunately. That is really

15:55 nasty. So it's attached to a continuously variable transmission and when you floor it

15:59 not a whole lot changes. It is really not a very pleasant setup. The real problem though

16:05 is when you come to a stop. So we've come to a stop now, the petrol engine has kicked off and

16:11 we're about to take off. What you get is this shunt as you take off. It is truly bizarre. I don't

16:19 experience this in any other hybrid cars and it has been so poorly calibrated that there's no

16:24 smooth way of taking off. The second you breathe on the throttle a little bit too hard you get that

16:29 shunt in the back as the the boxer engine kicks on. I just can't understand how they've got this

16:35 so wrong and released a car that feels like this behind the wheel. Now what is a self-charging

16:41 hybrid? That's what Subaru calls this and EV evangelists absolutely hate that phrase because

16:47 it kind of suggests that the car will charge on its own. Well technically it kind of does

16:52 because when you're driving the car and you're using the brakes it's actually using the car's

16:57 inertia and the momentum to charge the system through regenerative braking. That word's always

17:02 hard. As you lean onto the brake you can see the system charging the battery and then it provides

17:07 that battery power later on for giving you a little bit of propulsion and also to power some

17:11 of the auxiliary systems. Okay let's talk fuel economy. Obviously the hybrid system is going to

17:15 help that. Well kind of. It uses a lithium-ion battery instead of a nickel metal hydride

17:20 battery which is used in cars like the RAV4 hybrid. But the problem here is that it only

17:25 saves you about half a litre per 100 kilometres in fuel consumption. So we've got an Instagram

17:29 question from Zachary Ong. What's it like in the real world? Well not great. If the official is 6.7

17:36 this is currently doing 8.9 and that's with a majority of highway driving so that is a really

17:41 poor effort. Here's the confusing part. The hybrid only comes with a 48 litre fuel tank so it means

17:45 you're only getting around 700 kilometres of range per tank. The non-hybrid which is just the

17:50 two and a half litre Forester gets around 850 kilometres worth of range. So it is very confusing

17:58 that you pay more to get the car that travels less distance. It doesn't really make much sense.

18:03 Okay so we've gone through the negatives. What about the positives? So at under 40 kilometres

18:07 an hour you can push the car along only on EV and that seems to work really well. You have to be

18:12 very gentle with the throttle because if you use too much the petrol engine kicks on. So you kind

18:17 of have to be very gentle with it and let it get along on its own steed without pushing it too hard

18:22 and when you are in that EV mode it's actually nice and quiet inside the cabin. You don't really

18:26 hear a great deal but the second that petrol engine comes on and even more so when you get

18:30 on the throttle and the CVT flares up you're starting to hear a lot of noise coming into the

18:35 cabin. The ride's good. It's slightly on the firmer side of comfortable but that comes down to those

18:39 18-inch alloy wheels. I think if you went for 17s instead the ride would be a little bit smoother

18:44 but it's not the end of the world. It's not like it's so firm that it's rattling your teeth out.

18:48 It is just comfortable enough for a country drive. It's sucking up potholes and bumps really nicely

18:53 and you don't get any rack rattle through the steering. Speaking of the steering,

18:57 plenty of communication through there. This car's fantastic for the reason that it's

19:00 permanent all-wheel drive. So you're always sending torque to all four wheels. It's not

19:04 like an on-demand system like a lot of SUVs in this segment. If you do want to do a little bit

19:08 of light off-roading you've got enough ground clearance to do the very basic stuff and then

19:12 down here you have X-Mode. So X-Mode allows you to go between dirt, gravel and also snow modes

19:18 and that's going to vary your stability control and how the torque is delivered to each wheel.

19:22 Yeah, it works well. Flick of this switch enables that. It tells you that it's enabled as well and

19:26 then you push it once again to go back to normal mode and then finally on the steering wheel you

19:30 have Subaru's version of Sport Mode which is S and I. Push the S button you get sharper throttle

19:35 response, a little bit more oomph but not a great deal changes compared to what it's like in just

19:40 normal mode. Let's talk visibility. This is probably the thing I love the most about the

19:43 Forester. You can actually see beautifully out the front sides. You get big wing mirrors. There's

19:49 plenty of visibility out the back. The car itself feels so airy in here that it just feels a lot

19:54 bigger than the rest of the competitors in this segment. So Subaru has certainly nailed the

19:58 packaging and the visibility you get as part of that. Okay, Subaru Forester. I'm so disappointed

20:04 because I really like the Forester but it has been completely let down by this hybrid system.

20:09 It's such a poor implementation and you would have thought with Toyota's input and Toyota's

20:13 ownership of the company they could have at least leant on Toyota's engineers to refine this system.

20:19 It's so clunky and unpredictable that it really ruins the driving experience. It robs you of range

20:24 because it has a smaller tank. You don't get as much towing capacity and the fuel economy really

20:28 isn't that good. So what do you do? If you do want desperately a hybrid, go the RAV4. That is a much

20:33 better car in every single way. But if you are set on a Subaru, and a lot of people are, there's a lot

20:38 of repeat purchases with Subaru, just get the one that's the non-hybrid. You're getting a bigger

20:42 fuel tank, you're getting the same benefits of the interior, it's beautiful to drive, you just don't

20:47 have to deal with that clunky hybrid system. So let us know in the comments below if you were

20:51 looking at this and whether you're dissuaded or whether you bought one. Does it get any better

20:54 with time? Is it like a wine? Let me know in the comments below. Now, if you have found this video

20:58 useful, please don't forget to subscribe, hit the like button and also press the bell icon because

21:03 that's going to tell you every single time we review a new car. But until next time, take it easy.

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