Of the two concept cars Mazda showed this week, the Vision X-Compact is the one that makes the most sense as a production car. This baby hatchback has some serious style, and Mazda says it’ll be backed up with an equal amount of substance—if something digital can have substance, that is.
But it looks darn cool, right? To our eyes, it looks like somebody sent a late-third-gen Mazda Carol off to an Italian design house for an overhaul. Those city car aesthetics suggest to us that we’re looking at some sort of potential Mazda2 successor—and to hear Mazda tell it, it will have personality to match, but probably not in the way you’d normally expect from an automobile. Yep, you guessed it; there’s AI involved.
Since Mazda gave us nothing at all to go on regarding its mechanical underpinnings, we’re left to speculate as to what might power this charming little hatchback. Given Mazda’s (apparently deepening) ties with Toyota, we’d wager this is related to the Yaris and would likely share the subcompact Toyota’s next-gen powertrain lineup. Given the source, we’d bet on hybrids, but with cheaper EVs gaining popularity (both overseas and here at home), it’s hard to rule anything out at this stage.
In describing what sounds like a digital assistant, Mazda’s Kaisei Takahashi spoke of a “warm” and “not intrusive” presence that understands you and anticipates your needs, even reading your mood before queuing up an appropriate playlist.
“In the future, a Mazda vehicle will be a companion that makes every journey richer,” Takahashi said in the announcement. “Like spending time with a friend, it will invite dimension, variety, satisfaction—and a feeling of being understood. That is all we want.”
That wasn’t the only instance of friend in the release, and synonyms such as “presence” and “companion” likewise appeared.
“This is not science fiction,” Takahashi added. “This is where Mazda is heading.”
I’m not so sure we need an AI-powered assistant on wheels, but if this is the future of Mazda’s city car design, I’m encouraged. This is a sharp little hatchback.
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