The SUBARU Group’s Unique Business Model
The SUBARU Group’s Unique Business Model
Subaru is building a unique business model to achieve its vision of being a company “Delivering happiness to all.” Instead of simply expanding our priorities in our business, products, markets, and development, we aim to achieve sustainable growth by selecting and concentrating our business resources in areas where we can best utilize the technologies and know-how that we have built up over the years as part of the human-oriented approach to Monozukuri which Subaru has maintained throughout its history.
In our automotive business, for example, we select and focus on specific areas to provide enhanced functional value in the form of vehicle safety, durability, and superior handling. This allows us to offer value to our customers in the form of Enjoyment and Peace of Mind. As a result of these efforts, our customers see Subaru vehicles as more than just a means of transport—they are an essential part of our customers’ lifestyles.
We will continue to meet our customers’ expectations and make efforts to enrich people’s lives. This will allow us to deepen our relationships with our customers and enhance the value of the Subaru brand.
SUBARU’s Selected Focus Areas
Development Focus
Enhancing the Most Basic Functions of Our Vehicles to Provide “Enjoyment and Peace of Mind”
Subaru, which has roots as an aircraft manufacturer, has constantly maintained a human-oriented approach to Monozukuri. Even in the midst of changing times, this approach has always been the core of our manufacturing philosophy, allowing us to create various unique and advanced technologies by continually taking on challenges that enrich the lives of our customers and society. Based on this human-oriented approach to Monozukuri, Subaru will continue to enhance the basic functions of our vehicles—expanding our customers’ freedom of movement—to provide customers with Enjoyment and Peace of Mind.
Ensuring driving safety from every perspective, from putting on your seat belt to unexpected situations
Ever since the Subaru 360 popularized personal car ownership in Japan, the philosophy at Subaru has been to give top priority to safety because people entrust their cars with their lives. The safety technologies that we continue to refine based on this philosophy are integrated into the concept of delivering All-Around Safety to customers whenever they ride in our vehicles, from when they put on their seat belts to unexpected situations. Subaru’s enhanced safety performance constantly receives the highest safety performance ratings from various third parties in and outside of Japan.
Development based on our customers’ car use in the real world
At Subaru, we place importance on being practical for our customers, which is why we build cars that match their lifestyles and changing needs. Examples include a touring wagon that combines a spacious luggage compartment with sporty driving performance, and a crossover SUV that combines off-road capability with everyday usability. Meticulous attention to materials, structure, and layout are factors that enhance the safety of the vehicle. This attention to detail enables us to make the frame thin and strong, which results in a high level of both driving visibility and passive safety performance.
Our vehicles are tested on our company’s test track by taking into account various patterns of use by our customers. We also conduct numerous other tests in harsh environments around the world, including uphill driving, rough road handling, and towing. This allows us to collect a diverse array of performance data which we use to boost the reliability of our vehicles in the real world.
We aim for our cars to be easy to freely control for anyone in any environment
Unless the driver can control the car freely, they will not be able to drive with Enjoyment and Peace of Mind. The car must respond to the driver’s control of the steering wheel without delay, move smoothly without any awkwardness, and never require steering adjustments when driving straight. This is the kind of car that Subaru strives for when refining basic performance—a car that anyone can operate freely with peace of mind.
Subaru does not have dedicated test drivers—that job is carried out by our engineers. Our engineers strive to achieve better basic performance by understanding the level of skills possessed by professional test drivers. This sharpens their ability to feel the difference between the ideal and reality, and theorize the mechanism behind that difference, which they can then reflect in the best possible design drawings.
If our engineers cannot acquire the equipment they need to identify the source of any differences felt between the ideal and reality, they will create their own equipment to solve the problem. By constantly making cars informed not just by hard data, but also by sensory aspects, we are able to exceed the expectations of our customers while accumulating unique theoretical knowledge and know-how.
