Why the first Mazda EV matters to you

When it comes to the new range of electric vehicles it will unveil at the Tokyo motor show in October, Mazda is going to have some explaining to do.

While the average motorist’s main concern when considering whether to buy an EV -- particularly in Australia -- is its range (how many kilometres it can go between charges), Mazda is asking consumers to consider a more holistic approach.

The company’s goal is to “reduce CO2 emission over the car’s entire life cycle, from well to wheel”. That means considering the entire emissions cost of a car, from the extraction of raw materials and construction of the vehicle and its batteries, to the emissions it produces in its usable life and then the eventual disposal and recycling of its components.

When this life cycle is considered, Mazda says “the smaller the battery, the lower the CO2 emissions”.

Which is why the company’s first EV, yet to be named but likely to be a small SUV wearing a Mazda E badge when it’s unveiled at the Tokyo motor show in October, makes do with just a 355-volt, 35.5kWh battery, good for 105kW and 265Nm.

By comparison, a new Tesla Model 3 can be had with either 50, 62 or 75kWh batteries, delivering between 380 and 499km of claimed range. Both the Nissan LEAF and Renault ZOE have 40kWh batteries, and offer claimed range of between 270 and 300km.

In countries like Norway, where Mazda launched its new electric approach, people are less concerned about range, because they don’t tend to drive long distances, and charging points are plentiful (there are more than 10,000 of them, all using power sourced from hydro-electric, clean-energy streams).

In Australia, however, selling people on the idea that they have to put up with less range so that they can help save the planet is going to be a challenge, particularly as other brands focus on extending the number of kilometres their EVs offer by fitting larger batteries. Elon Musk is talking up 1000km-range vehicles.

The fact is, of course, that Mazda Australia might not be keen to give us the Japanese car-maker’s new EV anyway, because MMC has made it clear that the company’s approach will be to produce multiple electrification technologies and offer the most appropriate option in each market.

Countries that have a high “clean power source ratio” and a high penetration of charging stations will get the full EV option, and it is indicative of how few of these countries exist that Mazda predicts this will make up just five per cent of its total sales by 2030.

The other 95 per cent will be plug-in hybrids -- for those with “fair” levels of clean energy and some charging stations, and series hybrids for those with “poor” levels.

As Mazda Australia spokesman Alastair Doak pointed out, “if the aim is to reduce CO2 emissions, then you have to consider that a car charged using electricity from a coal-fired power station in Australia is producing more than 200g of CO2 per kilometre.”

Europe is already aiming for a goal of just 95g/km for the EU fleet-wide average emission of new passenger cars by 2021.

For Australians, the most likely electrified model from Mazda will be the Rotary Engine Range Extender, which is still under development and “some way off yet”, although Mazda was able to show us a cutaway of a vehicle with the system in Norway.

The engine bay of the vehicle was filled with an electric motor on one side, and a slightly smaller rotary engine on the other, which would act as a generator for the electric system, rather than being attached directly to the wheels.

The plan is also to make it possible for the rotary engine to run on compressed gas, or LPG.

“What we intend to do with the rotary model is to have a small generator but a larger battery,” Matsuhiro Tanaka, Mazda’s deputy general manager of vehicle development, explained.

“The advantage of the rotary is that it is very compact and very light, although we are still working on technologies to make it even lighter.

“Then we will also have plug-in hybrids and series hybrids, and we will have different version of the hybrid, with 24 and 48 volts.”

Tanaka said the range-extender EV would most likely be considered for countries, like Australia, that do a lot of long-distance driving.

Beyond that, Mazda is also working on a whole new kind of EV, as part of a joint-venture with Toyota, which is unlikely to feature any rotary-engine tech.

“That project with Toyota is for the next generation of EV tech that’s still under development, so it will be very different to what we see here,” Tanaka added. “This one is completely proprietary Mazda technology.”

Speaking of that technology, the new Mazda EV aims to be unique in the market by offering a different kind of driving experience.

The most noticeable part of this is the lack of aggressive regenerative braking, and the use of what Mazda has dubbed a ‘Motor Pedal’, rather than an accelerator.

What this means in practice is that, unlike most EVs, which effectively start to brake themselves as soon as you get off the throttle, the Mazda’s regen is far more subtle, requiring you to apply the brakes as you would in a normal internal-combustion car.

Mazda claims that using its EV’s Motor Pedal is like “adding an extra muscle to your body” and thus allows the driver total, intimate control of torque usage.

The engineers also aimed to allow drivers to sense the amount of torque the car is generating by using “the accumulated knowledge of the relation between foe and sound heard in nature”, and used the example of a river; we know how hard it is flowing from a distance by the sound of the water.

The new EV uses a sound generator to tell a driver’s ears what is going on with the electric motor through the use of subtle, quiet and yet carefully calibrated sound frequencies.

Another specially developed feature for the EV is a special version of Mazda’s G-Vectoring Control, which takes advantage of the fact that electric motors allow the system to deliver torque where it’s needed at any point during cornering, even if the driver is off the throttle.

This is simply not possible in an ICE car, and the engineers seemed to be suggesting that this could make Mazda’s EVs even better to drive enthusiastically than a traditional vehicle. All this makes us feel less worried about our driving future.

While it would seem out of line with Mazda’s global approach to bring the full EV model to Australia, after it goes on sale in selected markets in 2020, Mazda Australia marketing director Alastair Doak is not ruling it out.

“It’s a very exciting car, because it drives very differently to other EVs and that’s the Mazda way -- to be different -- so having that to set it apart from other EVs in the Australian market would obviously be a good thing,” he said.

“We’ll just have to wait and see.”

Doak did, however, admit he was pleasantly surprised to hear that Hyundai was managing to sell around 70 of its Kona EVs a month -- a result that seemed to get his competitive juices flowing.