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Stephen Corby4 Sept 2019
NEWS

TOKYO MOTOR SHOW: Mazda to unveil its first EV

Japanese brand to join electric car race with Mazda E small SUV; rotary range-extender to come

Mazda is joining the global rush towards electric vehicles (EVs) and will unveil its first full EV at the Tokyo motor show in October -- despite the fact that, unlike more bullish car-makers, it’s predicting EVs will only account for five per cent of its global sales by 2030.

What makes the first Mazda EV so important, however, is that the Japanese car-maker is suggesting that the other 95 per cent of the cars it sells will be hybrids, plug-in hybrids or range-extenders (with the unique combination of a rotary engine operating as a generator for a car’s electric motor).

Due on sale in selected markets in 2020 and likely to be a small SUV wearing the Mazda E badge, the new EV is merely the first “of a completely new line-up of products”, according to Matsuhiro Tanaka, Mazda’s deputy general manager of vehicle development.

Tanaka was speaking to carsales at a preview drive of Mazda’s as-yet-unnamed new EV in Norway, where, if they want to sell vehicles post-2025, car companies will need to offer EVs, as the country’s goal is to be 100 per cent emissions-free by that year.

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As part of its global mission to assist with a reduction in CO2 emissions, Mazda’s approach will be to offer its first EV only to countries that have plentiful charging infrastructure and where electricity is sourced from clean energy, neither of which applies to Australia.

“This will influence our choice of where to sell it, but also it will go to countries that have very stringent emissions regulations,” Tanaka explained.

“Also somewhere like China where, if we can introduce EVs into the market, we can help to do something about that county’s air pollution.”

Mazda is taking a very realistic approach to reducing CO2 in the immediate future, however, which is to focus on the bulk of cars that people are buying now -- those with internal-combustion engines.

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“Our core strategy is that we want a substantive reduction in CO2,” said Tanaka. “That means we will work on the most prolific of the powertrains, the internal-combustion engine, so we will improve the efficiency of that.

“Then we can have efficient and low-emission internal-combustion cars, with minimal electrification technology -- that really is the big picture of what we want in our strategy.”

The company’s first EV will have a unique look, although one still embracing the company’s Kodo design language, and will use a relatively small 35.5kWh battery, providing 105kW and 265Nm.

So far it hasn’t released range figures – let alone the actual car -- but you can bet it won’t be getting more than 300km per charge with a battery that small.

Mazda believes that building EVs with smaller batteries is the most energy-efficient, emissions-friendly approach, taking into account the entire life-cycle of the vehicle.

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It remains to be seen whether Australia -- a country with very little charging infrastructure and where most of our power still comes from burning brown coal -- will get Mazda’s first EV, but Mazda Australia marketing chief Alastair Doak was not ruling it out.

“Clearly EVs are coming to Australia at some point, but with the current lack of infrastructure and government incentives it’s obviously a challenge, so we’ll have to wait and see,” Doak said.

As for Tanaka, he suggested that we might need to wait for the rotary-engine based range-extender, which is still under development.

“We would like to implement [the range extender] in countries that have a requirement for long-distance driving, [like Australia] which would mean that in terms of electrification technology it would be a range-extender or plug-in hybrid that’s the most valid solution,” he said.

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Written byStephen Corby
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