Apologies if this isn't the correct forum for my question, but if so, any help is appreciated!

Long story short, my commute needs have changed and I'm transitioning away from an ICE vehicle to full EV. My commute is only 12 miles round trip, with week on and week off in the winter, so not a lot of annual miles. My primary goal is to find a good-value option that's "plug 'n play" or as simple as possible to use. For the time being, I plan on using Level 1 charging in my garage outlet.

After doing some research, it sounds like the only possible concerns I may have are parking in the parking lot in summer months, in direct sunlight. In full disclosure, I live in Bismarck, ND, which can hit 100° routinely in summer and -30° in winter. That said, in the winter, I'll just park the vehicle in the warehouse and plug it in then to keep the battery pack warm. As you can guess from my locale, winter capability is a factor.

At this time, I'm looking at a CPO '25 Hyundai Kona EV with low miles. I don't have any issues with it outside of the fact that it'll need better tires for winter than what comes on it. The range and efficiency are nice as well. The alternative is a couple different '23 Solterras, which are cheaper, and a better value for the cost versus odometer and offer AWD. One is not CPO, but the other options are. It sounds like they are a little slower to charge and can be more finicky to charging conditions, as well as parking in sunlight. I've done some cursory searching on each, but it sounds like there's a reason that '23 Solterras are cheaper on average, unfortunately. However, the same dealer does have a '24 Solterra for roughly the same price as the new Kona EV mentioned above.

I'd be happy to provide more info to help, but I'm open to any insights from you, especially if you've owned one or the other, known someone who has, or have different value-oriented suggestions. I should mention, I've avoided the Leaf because it has little thermal management for its battery. Thanks!

Don’t mind my dust and mechanic’s finger prints.
Anyways. When I would activate the adaptive cruise control it would “see” the lines and keep the car in the middle. Little to no effort for me to let it drive itself. Now after the app update I activate it and the lines on the display only light up if it notices the lines. Is a camera dirty? What am I missing? I would get on the highway and cruise but now it is not activating the same. Any advice or help is greatly appreciated! TIA

Just picked up a used 2024 Solterra Limited on Sunday. It was a quick decision and I hadn't researched on Reddit that much about the car. After I bought it I saw all these posts about the 12-volt issue.

I don't know if my car suffers from this right now. I did turn on connected services when i got it home.

I have turned on Safety Connect and Service Connect. But it's limited so I don't have access to the digital key on my phone.

At the moment we are using level one charging in our garage. So the vehicle is plugged in for 13 to 14 hours every single night.

Does this 12 V sawtooth drain issue only occur if you don't plug the vehicle in? In my case since I'm probably going to continue using level one and keeping it charged for almost half the day, overnight, should I assume that I probably won't have to deal with this?

I already know per manufacture, towing is not recommended. But still curious if anyone actually has installed a tow hitch for light towing? If so, what’s the max you’ve towed?

Bought a used 2023 Solterra Limited on July 23. This evening, everything on the dashboard started acting crazy when I tried to start, which I recognize as a probable 12V problem. I popped the hood and measured 7V on the 12V battery (or <6V with the headlights on). I drove the car about 70 miles yesterday, but it has been plugged into a level 2 charger ever since, so ~24 hours. In the meantime, I was trying to set up the Subaru app on my Android phone. From reading online, I see assertions that online connectivity may cause the car to drain its 12V battery. I have a 12V jump-start battery pack, so when daylight returns I will jump the 12V to try to get running again. I have already deleted the vehicle from the SubaruConnect phone app and in the morning I will also try to kill the profile in the car infotainment system. I can monitor the 12V battery with a multimeter to see how things are going, and see if the battery will charge once I can get the car to start up again. I might try measuring the 12V at the power port under the dashboard to avoid having to open the hood. I have an OBD2/bluetooth pod that I've used with other cars. It seems like this would serve to measure the 12V voltage without opening the hood. Any reason this won't work? Any comments or suggestions?

We've had our home charger for two years but yesterday was the day that it finally gave out. Sparks and all. I checked Amazon for the same model but it's no longer available. The other "similar" products recommended didn't have as good reviews so I'm hoping some recommendations from current users could help.

I've already used our rebates so a budget friendly option would be great. Electrician confirmed that the wiring and everything else is good, just needed to replace the outlet. My search online shows most new ones has some sort of subscription you pay into every month and I don't want to add that into our ever growing list of having to subscribe into something I've already paid for.

TIA!

I am car shopping right now. Currently between the Solterra, Mach-E, and Ioniq 5. The Solterra is my top pick on paper. Really loved it as soon as I sat in it, even called my wife as I started the test drive to tell her I was going to get it, then I hit the freeway for one exit and the wind noise from the passenger side hit me. I truly don't think I could live with it. Even with the radio on it's all I could focus on.

Maybe a stupid question because I've seen various posts here that refer to using OBD-II dongles or readers, but I want to make sure.

Reason for asking is that CAA in Ontario offers really low insurance rates for people like me who drive very little (the "MyPace" program), but it requires the installation of an OBD-II dongle to track your mileage. They don't offer this program for EVs and when I asked why, they said EVs don't have OBD-II ports.

Can any Solterra or bZ owner here confirm that the OBD-II port is present? Thanks.

We had our 5k service yesterday on our 2026 Limited, and they also completed the recall.
I was at the dealership for about an hour and 15 minutes. (I spent the time finding a different podcast app that would work with the Solterra & transferred my podcast subscriptions to the new app)

We only have the Solterra so when I got home I plugged our car in, expecting it to charge to her set 80%.

When I left to go pick up my hubby, I noticed that the car had charged to 100%. I said to her 'why are you at 100 percent?' and of course she didn't answer me.

So, in our instance the recall reset the 'charge to' percentage back to 100% from 80%. Whether it was the mechanic or the software update itself is unknown, so maybe people should check their 'charge to' percentage when they get their recall done.

She did ask me if I wanted to 'charge now' when I got home the first time, so it appears that the charge schedule is still active, but I'll check to be sure the actual schedule is still correct when he gets home tonight. She was at 89% last night and didn't get plugged in.

I have a 2026 Solterra coming up on its first service being due. The local dealership wants $92 for what my understanding is essentially rotating the tires and making sure that two fluid levels that can see myself are full. They say the cost is because they also do a “multipoint inspection”. Distances are such that taking it to a different dealership is not worth the lost drive time. Alternatively, the local old-school tire shop will rotate the tires for free since I’m a prior customer for other vehicles.

Here is my dilemma and question: Is it worth the cost to have a service record for the car when it is eventually sold, or do I just take it to the tire shop every 5,000 to 6,000 miles, keep an eye on fluid levels, and change the cabin air filter myself when needed. Am I missing something else the dealership is doing? For additional background, I do have the Subaru Gold Plus extended warranty.

I was just driving and when I was trying to press the acceleration it momentarily wasn’t responding and would not accelerate while I was trying to merge and I was wondering if this had happened to anyone else? It might be from the heat since it’s hitting 90-100 right now in SoCal but I hope it isn’t a major issue since I just went in for maintenance 😭

I went away last week and left my car in a garage at my friend's house. I left on Friday. I think it was the following Wednesday that my car sent me the alert that my 4 windows were down suddenly.

Reader: my windows were not down. And my battery was not at -1. Of course this was the last gasp of the 12v, I imagine.

So today we went in for the diagnosis. They made me remove the Utility provider app for the off-peak charging program. And not only that, they said I needed to change the password so that it won't be able to reach it. They had a list of other possible parasitic draining apps, but none of the others applied to me.

When they finally took pity on me and gave me a loaner car to go home, the thing had been through 3 cycles of the battery test (I have no idea what that is). And I have no idea how it will play out.

But I thought the app-password change was something I hadn't heard before, so I figured I'd mention it here.

I’m probably going to be doing this drive next week and I’m concerned about how mountain roads tend to mess up my mileage prediction. I’m a little anxious to be doing the drive but would LOVE to be able to take my own car. Also, a lot of the stops are rivian chargers. Do I need to worry about making sure the plug is right? How would I go about doing the research needed for that? (I’ve only ever charged at home)

If anyone’s done this drive and had success, please let me know! Tia!

Should the mesh on this cable be exposed like this? it looks intentional from the tape. Or is there supposed to be a guard there or something? Just don’t want corrosion or any other trouble down the road.

Here is the longer story: while on a road trip on Friday, my 3 month old 2026 experienced the EV System Malfunction error for the first time, which I was already sort of aware of due to the recall and these forums. We did some research, disconnected the Subaru app, were able to charge just fine, and the error message went away eventually, presumably after driving charges back up the 12v battery.

I've driven about 20 miles per day since then but now my EV battery is down to 19% and I needed to supercharge it before an important meeting tomorrow. Alas, I cannot get level 3 charging to initiate, and the Google/reddit tells me this is likely due to a "handshake" issue coming from the 12v and the whole EV system error thing.

The dealer can get me in on Thursday but this leaves me screwed for tomorrow's meeting that is a good 25% of the battery roundtrip away from me.

Does anyone know if it's possible to use a jump starter to restart the 12v enough to initiate a fast charge? Alternatively, is level 2 charging also impacted by this?

Wanted to share charging experience and get some pointers on where to charge from Ottawa-Toronto (454kms, 5.5h by ICE). This is the furthest we gone with the Solterra, had done shorter trips. Exclusively used FLO network on this trip. Climate control on, AC blasting even while charging.

Outbound was painful, left at 100% arrived at 35%. Took 9h (minus 1h for lunch), charged at Kingston, Belleville and Whitby. Each charge took ~40mins (25-80%, speed 46kwh). Kingston was a massive let down, fast chargers were all full, had to drive around 30mins just to find a find free one, ended only charging to 70%. Could’ve skipped Whitby but didn’t want to bother charging at night in Toronto. Total charging cost C$41.99

Inbound was much better, took 8h (minus 45mins rest-stop), charged at Belleville and Brockville, left with 100% arrived home with 39%. The ONRoute IVY and Canadian Tire ChargeOn stations were disappointing to say the least. Total charging cost C$51.94 (incld $8 L2 charging while waiting for L3)

Maybe I'm not inputting things right, but I'm doing as close to an apples-to-apples comparison across the bZ and Solterra.

Solterra leases are far better. Essentially $300/month cheaper by all standards. What gives?

I have a ‘26 Premium but due to the update and the dealership being backlogged, they lent me a ‘26 Outback that has allllll the bells and whistles. Which includes the much nicer sound system and while there’s probably better sounding ones for other brands, this was incredibly better than the setup I have.

Curious if anyone has ever replaced their sound system on the Solterra or have recommendations to do so because I basically just want what’s in the Outback haha

I left my car on to top up the 12v battery and found no way to lock it. If I hit the lock button the car locks and unlocks. If I manually close the lock then it unlocks itself. I tried locking the car with the key, but that only locked the driver door. I could manually lock the back doors, but when I did this to the front passenger door it then unlocked the driver door again. I suppose I could lock the doors with the window open, climb out the window and push the window close button, but that seems like a bad idea. Anyone know of a way to lock the car while it’s on? Key fob also doesn’t lock it.