Mazda relies on new combustion engines
The other way
Mazda CX-9 USA
© press-inform – the press office
While more and more brands are slowly but surely wanting to say goodbye to combustion technology, Mazda is once again taking a different path. The Japanese car maker brings new crossovers with a completely redesigned six-cylinder.
Mazda likes to find its own way. While more and more manufacturers are celebrating the gradual end of the combustion engine and concentrating solely on electromobility, Mazda sees it very differently. Not for the first time, because the tech-savvy Japanese relied on the rotary piston engine for decades, which no longer had a future with any other. Even when other brands opted for small displacements and turbo technology, Mazda stuck to the symbiosis of diesel and combustion engine with its Skyaktiv technology and has so far not given plug-in hybrids any significant chance either. With the MX-30, electric cars currently play a comparatively small role at Mazda.
A model and technology offensive will now start in the coming year, in which electric motors will not play the main role. With the Mazda CX-60 and the Mazda CX-80, the company will be introducing two completely new crossover models above the current models in Europe over the next two years, thus serving a segment that was previously available in the USA with the CX-9 recorded. Both new models stand on a large platform with motors installed lengthways. In the US and some other non-European markets, the Japanese are introducing the new Mazda CX-70 and Mazda CX-90 models based on the same platform. The important North American market is also getting a new CX-50, which is on the move on the small platform that is also home to the CX-3, CX-30 and MX-30.
The Mazda CX-50 will be the first Mazda vehicle to be produced from January 2022 at the new plant in Huntsville, Alabama, which is being built jointly with Toyota. While the Mazda CX-60 has two rows of seats with five seats, the larger Mazda CX-80 offers up to seven seats on three rows of seats. The two SUVs are the first vehicles with the new Mazda plug-in hybrid drive with an in-line four-cylinder, which is supported by an electric motor. In addition to this drive, the newly developed in-line six-cylinders are also finding their way into the new models – as gasoline and diesel. Somewhat surprising: in addition to the plug-in hybrid drive, there will only be a turbo-charged version of the new in-line six-cylinder petrol engine in the USA.
In addition, Mazda will offer a new variant of the Mazda MX-30 in Europe and the USA in the first half of 2022. The electric crossover is then also available in a version with a rotary piston engine that drives a generator for on-board power generation. The new type of plug-in hybrid drive, which always drives the wheels electrically, enables purely electric driving over shorter distances as well as covering longer distances with the rotary piston engine. It won’t be until 2025 that Mazda will unleash a series of new electric vehicles on customers around the world. By 2030 there should only be fully electric vehicles and hybrid versions in the European model range.