SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, CA – Winding down mountain roads, on off-road trails and along the Pacific Coast Highway, a test drive of Subaru’s 2025 Forester Hybrid proves it could be a powerful force in the compact CUV market.
The vehicle competes in all the ways that matter. It’s a clean drive with good noise insulation and strong acceleration. And while its advertised mileage of 35 mpg (8.1 L/100 km) is slightly lower than its peers, the vehicle’s starting price of $36,595 makes it one of the more affordable hybrid CUVs when compared to competitors' similarly equipped all-wheel-drive hybrid crossovers.
The model also represents a technological leap for Subaru: The 2025 Forester Hybrid introduces Subaru’s next-generation series parallel hybrid system to the market, featuring notable upgrades from both previous hybrids and the standard Forester.
“There are improvements across the board in this vehicle, not just on fuel economy,” says Bill Stokes, car line planning manager at Subaru of America. “We feel like this is the best Forester we have on sale.”
An All-Around Upgrade to Subaru’s Hybrids
Subaru has tried hybrids before, but executives had teased this one would be different.
The automaker briefly put a hybrid Crosstrek on the market mid-last decade, but mileage gains for that model were minor. Then the automaker tried to sell a Crosstrek plug-in hybrid in 2023, but found cargo space was compromised and customers wanted different trim levels.
Subaru took those lessons from the past into account when designing the new Forester Hybrid, says Stokes. This time, there’s no sacrificing utility or cargo space, and customers can shop at different trim levels with minimal changes in price.
“We were really trying to make sure that this was a vehicle that a Subaru customer could buy and still feel like it was going to do all the things that Subaru globally is expected to do, while also getting better fuel economy, better off-road components, and we’ve also improved the comfort and tech of the vehicle,” says Stokes.
As a result, the hybrid is an upgrade to the Forester in some ways. Beyond fuel economy, the Forester Hybrid is also quieter, comes with new tech like a digital instrument cluster that is standard at all trim levels, and sacrifices just 1.9 cu.-in. (.03 L) of cargo space compared to the base trim of the Forester – an impressive feat considering the hybrid packs a battery in the cargo area.
The Sport, Limited and Touring grades come with Reverse Automatic Braking, a nifty feature for off-roading that allows the vehicle to maintain a consistent speed on downward slopes without pressing the brake pedal.
Drive Impressions: An Off-road Powerhouse
Subaru knows its audience: The automaker prides itself on its vehicles’ resilience on rugged terrain and generally markets itself as a brand for an outdoor lifestyle.
Media had the opportunity to test the vehicle on an off-road trail, which included a comparison test of rival vehicles.
The test was fascinating: We were invited to drive a 2025 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid, Honda CR-V Hybrid and Subaru Forester Hybrid up a steep forest hill and see which vehicle could make it all the way up.
As Subaru officials predicted, our CR-V made it about halfway up the hill, while the RAV4 made it about three-quarters of the way and the Forester had little difficulty. (Some fellow journalists made it up on RAV4, but all agreed the Forester handled the hill best.)
Granted, the test was staged, but it proved the point made by Subaru: The Forester Hybrid’s multiple electric motors are an asset, continuously powering the front and rear wheels, allowing the vehicle to more symmetrically power its AWD system compared to its peers and better allocate power to improve traction.
The RAV4 Hybrid and Honda CR-V systems, meanwhile, send power to the vehicles’ rear wheels only when needed, rather than continuously.
The design has its pros and cons. Subaru’s choice to consistently power its AWD is also part of the reason for its lower mileage compared to the RAV4 and Honda CR-V, but the automaker has prioritized powering the off-road capabilities over slight mileage improvements in this case.
The Forester has been one of Subaru’s best-selling U.S. models for years now, racking up 175,000 sales in 2024. The brand’s fielding of a hybrid Forester comes, likely not coincidentally, after the great successes Toyota and Honda have enjoyed with their respective RAV4 and CR-V hybrids. The hybrid variant of the RAV accounted for nearly half (208,000 of 475,000) of the compact Toyota CUV’s total U.S. volume last year, with the CR-V hybrid making up more than half (205,000 of 403,000) of the Honda model's full 2024 U.S. sales, according to Wards Intelligence data.
The 2025 Forester Hybrid is on sale now at U.S. Subaru dealers, beginning at $36,595 for the base Premium Hybrid trim, and topping out at $43,295 at the high-end Touring Hybrid trim level.
