Mazda

Mazda invited us out for a drive of its upcoming MX-30 electric compact SUV, and some conversations with Mazda’s Irvine R&D folks. We have a lot of thoughts to share about the car and the future of Mazda’s EV programs.

Mazda is launching its first electric car in the US market, the MX-30 EV, and it is likely going to have a tough time with a starting price of $33,470 and only 100 miles of range.

Mazda announced that its first-ever EV, the MX-30 crossover SUV, will be making its way to the US this fall. Beginning with dealerships in California, the battery-powered SUV will kick off an electrified fleet from Mazda that will also include a PHEV version of the MX-30 with a rotary generator. Previously, the all-electric MX-30 was exclusively available in Europe alone.

Mazda is known for its maverick streak. Where others zig, they zag, and there is much to admire in a pioneering approach. As it has innovated around the rotary engine, might Mazda be similarly innovative with its first ground-up battery electric vehicle?

Mazda yesterday began production of the all-new, all-electric Mazda MX-30 at its Ujina plant No. 1 in Hiroshima, Japan. The company is keeping its first pure EV moving forward to answer the demand for electric vehicles in Europe where stricter CO2 reductions are in place.

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Fears about the end of internal-combustion vehicles are a real thing for some automakers. In the past week or two, Volkswagen, Porsche, and Mazda all championed the long-term future of internal-combustion vehicles by pointing to the potential of synthetic and biofuels, such as ethanol and microalgae.

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Mazda has one of the strangest and most controversial approaches to electric cars and we just learned something else about it: the automaker made its first electric car artificially slower “to feel more like a gas car.”
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Mazda is considering whether to electrify the MX-5 Miata, their most famous vehicle, according to R&D boss Ichiro Hirose and brand chief Ikuo Maeda, as reported by Autocar.

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Mazda has revealed their MX-30 EV, the first fully electric car in the company’s stable, earlier today at Tokyo Motor Show.

Earlier this week, we saw the first photo of the car, and most of its specs were known already.  The only things left were pricing and availability, and more photos of the car from other angles.

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Mazda’s first production EV is set to be unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show on October 23.  In advance of that event, a photo has started to circulate on the internet that purports to show the vehicle in all its unveiled glory.

The photo seems to be taken from Japan Car Top magazine.  It labels the car as a “concept,” but the design is one we haven’t seen before and shows significant changes from prototypes that have been spotted testing.

Update: The MX-30 has been officially revealed, click through and take a look.

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Today, Mazda confirmed that they’ll be unveiling a new EV at the Tokyo Motor Show next month, according to Automotive News.

Mazda has been prepping a new EV, with prototypes recently spotted testing in a “CX”-style crossover body.  But Mazda says that this new EV will be a “brand new model,” rather than using the CX-30 body that has been spotted on prototypes.

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Mazda is preparing to launch its first electric car, and it looks like we have the first images of the prototype spotted testing in Norway.
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Mazda has been notoriously slow to embrace electric cars, but it now appears we’ll be seeing the company’s first all-electric model next year.

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Earlier this year, Toyota and Mazda announced their biggest electric vehicle commitment to date with a new $1.6 billion joint EV factory in the US.

Over 15 states have reportedly bid with incentive packages to get the project and we now learn that they are down to “3 or 4 locations” as Illinois was reportedly eliminated from the process this week.
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Earlier this year, Mazda and Toyota created a new joint-venture to develop electric vehicles and build a US factory.

Now the two Japanese automakers lay out their plans for EVs as Denso, an automotive component supplier, joins them.
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Mazda still doesn’t offer any electric vehicle and often talk down the technology publicly. Yet, they are reportedly planning to commit to the technology and announce that they will only sell electric cars and hybrids by 2030.
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Mazda and Toyota, arguably the two major automakers least invested in electric vehicles, are working on a new joint-venture to develop electric cars.

There’s been a lot of consolidation in the auto industry over the years, but the interesting aspect of this case is that surviving the electric car revolution in the industry is at least partly the reason behind it.
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Mazda exec Robert Davis doubled down on Mazda’s anti-EV stance at a Michigan trade group convention this week, Automotive News reported.  In a seminar, Davis stated that the “impending death of the internal combustion engine is overrated,” said governments shouldn’t “mandate” EVs, and said EV incentives should be eliminated.

Mazda currently makes no electric or plug-in hybrid models, though claimed last year that they were planning to offer EVs in 2019 primarily to meet ZEV regulations.

Robert Davis was a US senior VP of operations for Mazda until being reassigned to a smaller role earlier this year.

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Mazda announced last year that they will be forced to launch an electric car in California to comply with the zero-emission mandate around 2019, but that’s the only reason they are doing it.

The Japanese automaker is one of the last few major automakers with no interest in electric vehicles and it now explained why: demand.
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Mazda is one of the last few major automakers without any serious electric car program. It is betting on its fuel-efficient SkyActiv technology to meet increasingly stricter standards, but the Japanese automaker is apparently now coming to the realization that it will likely not be enough and it will have to turn to electric cars.
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