Mazda has long offered a a little particular vision of the motor sector. The MX-5, their little roadster, is a good example against the industry. While manufacturers have focused on larger and more powerful cars, the Japanese manufacturer preferred to devote resources to keeping its convertible in contained dimensions and light weight.
When manufacturers aimed at downsizing, engines with very small displacements (one liter), three-cylinder and turbocharged, Mazda insisted on more traditional structures, looking for low consumption in naturally aspirated engines with its Skyactiv.
Among the latest market trends, the manufacturer decided to do without touch screens, ensuring that they worsen safety behind the wheel. And, among his latest rarities, the turn of the screw that will be given to his Mazda MX-30, a series and plug-in hybrid which, to finish curling the loop, will use a rotary motor to generate electricity.
Precisely, the Mazda MX-30 is a car that has all the good and bad of Mazda. A perfect car for the city, with a spacious cabin, with personality (those suicide doors), a contained weight and very agile dynamics, as Victoria Fuentes explained in her test at Motorpasión.
The problem with the Mazda MX-30 is that its autonomy is 200 kilometers. At least in Spain, where we prioritize the purchase of a car with the aim that “it is worth everything”. The results are well reflected in the barely 50 registrations that were registered in our country in 2022, according to data from Anfac.
But that is not the ultimate intention of the brand. The Japanese believe in electric vehicles with contained autonomy and, some, for specific use in the city.
Less capacity and less heavy
Jeffrey Guyton, president and CEO of Mazda USA, in statements to Green Car Reports, has pointed out the inconvenience of going to huge autonomy, with gigantic batteries. “I don’t think that’s sustainable”he pointed.
His words suggest that Mazda does not consider it the right way to equip their vehicles with huge batteries that significantly increase the weight of the vehicle. Currently, vehicles with larger capacity batteries are comfortably exceeding two tons in weight.
At Mazda, however, they believe that the right path is to offer smaller size and weight batteries, even if it involves a greater number of stops during a trip. The philosophy is that, on a day-to-day basis, the driver does not need, in most cases, autonomies of 600, 700, 800 and up to 1,000 kilometers (the objective of some brands).
According to Mazda, having an electric car that hides batteries with such a capacity is a waste of energy, since only a few will be able to take advantage of it and, most of them, on rare occasions during the year.
You are not alone, but not everyone thinks alike
This way of thinking is not unique to Mazda. Among the names that have most recently positioned themselves in this regard we find Vincent Cobée, CEO of Citroën, who believes that the electric car is the perfect opportunity to abandon SUVs.
The top representative of the French firm has also warned of the risk that the industry is running to standardize vehicles that widely exceed two tons and is in favor of penalizing vehicles for their weight. In France, he stresses, aid is not granted state if the car exceeds 2,400 kg.
The path, according to Citroën, is to get vehicles that, with 60 kWh or 70 kWh batteries, are capable of traveling as many kilometers as possible. And Toyota doesn’t believe in super-sized batteries, either. Their Toyota bZ4x has a 71.4 kWh battery but they emphasize that with the resources they have to dedicate to hundreds of kWh batteries they can produce many more contained battery vehicles.
On the contrary, firms like Mercedes are willing to bet on very large batteries. During the presentation and test of their Mercedes Vision EQXX, they confirmed that the firm’s intention is to maintain batteries with a very large capacity, although they do hope to improve their energy density.
The Germans, unlike Mazda, assure that they do not believe in the line of “many loads and very fast”. On the contrary, they believe that improving the consumption and energy density of the batteries can offer very high autonomy even if their recharges are slower and that, in addition, it will improve their useful life in the long term.
