25% of Mazda’s New Cars Will Be Electric by 2030, But a Straight-Six Is Still in the Works
Mazda wants to have it both ways this decade.
As part of its commitment to be carbon-neutral by 2050, a quarter of all Mazda vehicles will be electric, and and every remaining car it makes will have some sort of electrified element by 2030. This means full EVs, plug-in hybrids, or regular hybrids. That's not a huge surprise, really, seeing as it's looked likely for a while that combustion-only cars might be banned in Japan by then.
The way it's doing it is by updating the Skyactiv platforms to incorporate various levels of hybridization, from very mild to full plug-in hybrids and a new EV as it revises the platform further. And yes, it will be making hybrid rotary engine powertrains.
Mazda has, to date, released one full EV. The 2021 MX-30 is no Tesla-killer; with just 124 miles of range, it's not exactly breaking the mold, especially since it looks pretty much like every hatchback-meets-crossover that automakers love to put out as their first EVs.
Mazda says it will use the current Skyactive multi-solution scalable architecture, which is already in its newest cars, to introduce a new range of cars for "Japan, Europe, the U.S., China, etc." so basically most of the places it already sells vehicles.
It's going to be bringing out five mild-hybrid models, five plug-in hybrid models, and three additional electric models from 2022 to 2025. But that's just the start of it; it's also building an EV-specific version of Skyactiv that will be launched between 2025 and 2030 and will be a scalable platform for pretty much any EV. Basically, Mazda has announced what GM is doing with Ultium or Mercedes with its electric vehicle architecture.
Internal combustion isn't dead to Mazda, however. In its announcement, Mazda committed that its electrification plans would "go hand in hand with the development of advanced internal combustion technology such as the award-winning e-Skyactiv X, as well as new straight-six engines."
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