Great! Too bad we still don’t know anything.
Mazda has toyed with electrification for years now but has so far shied away from making any sweeping reveals or announcements about its plans in production form, especially with regard to its ambitions in battery-electric vehicles (or full EVs).
While they do acknowledge the eventual shift away from internal combustion to be more or less inevitable, the path leading to it is long and meandering. Ecologically, they argue, it would be more beneficial to the environment to take a more holistic approach to reduce their carbon and industrial waste footprint.
This is achieved by investing and innovating in more efficient powertrain technologies and streamlining their production process to meet these same goals. The first major representation of this being their SkyActiv-X family of petrol burners, a four-cylinder motor that is able to operate on compression ignition alone, i.e without the need for a spark plug.
As detailed in their Sustainable Zoom-Zoom 2030 plan, they intend to reduce their corporate average carbon emissions by a collective 50 percent and achieve a 90 percent reduction by 2050.
Earlier this year, with the e-TPV prototype, the Hiroshima-based automaker shed some much needed light on their exploratory efforts at a post fossil fuel automotive landscape, and at the upcoming Tokyo Motor Show in late October, Mazda has announced that a new battery EV will be unveiled.
We have but one official teaser image attached to this piece of news, so we do wonder to what extend this vehicle will be revealed in finished, functional state. Mazda insists, however, that the vehicle will be an all-new model and that is intended to reach mass production.
Additionally, the EV will continue the automaker’s focus on “human centric design”, such as that seen on their most recent designs: Mazda3 and Mazda CX-30.
If those two are anything to go by, this fully-electric mystery model will be rather good looking. It goes without saying, too, that it will follow the brand’s ‘Kodo - Soul of Motion’ design philosophy, evoking a sense of certain beautiful handcrafted items.
Should Mazda be able to finish the EV before too long, it would mark Mazda’s grand entrance into the entry-level electric vehicle market currently headlined by the Nissan Leaf, Tesla Model 3, Renault Zoe, and soon, the Volkswagen ID.3.
For more on Mazda cars, check out our Showroom.
