The electric vehicle industry has just won over another traditional auto manufacturer as Mazda announces its plans to go electric across its product line up. By 2030, the Japanese company hopes every vehicle it produces will have a degree of electrification.
Mazda revealed in its product development policy, tagged an attention grabbing ‘Sustainable Zoom-Zoom 2030’, that electrification effort would be accelerated between 2022 and 2025. This is the first stage and it will see the auto maker introducing 13 new electric vehicle models in that period. Five models would be hybrids, another five would be plug-in and three are going to be fully electric.
All the models will be based on the SKYACTIV Multi-Solution Scalable Architecture, an electric platform created by Mazda. They are going to be mainly for sale in its home country, Europe, China, the US and ASEAN.
The 2nd stage of Mazda’ electrification plan will span from 2025 to 2030. It will see the introduction of another platform called SKYACTIV Scalable EV Architecture that will power fully electric vehicles. Several models are expected, with various sizes and body types. According to Mazda, “Based on this product launch plan, we assume that 100% of our products will have some level of electrification, and our EV ratio will be 25% by 2030”
When the first stage of the electrification plan starts, it will be a great departure from the company’s current state of products as it has no hybrid or fully electric vehicle on offer. The first one will come later this year, named MX-30 and it will be launched in the US. It is a fully electric crossover model but Mazda is adding a rotary engine as a range extender in the market.
Apart from electrifying its cars, Mazda is also developing its own advanced autonomous driving system called the Mazda Co-Pilot Concept that will be used for the first time in 2022 in its larger models. In its very advanced form, it will monitor the driver’s condition at all times to activate itself if the driver can no longer control the vehicle. It will stop the car and summon an ambulance.