Mazda not only brought new vehicle concepts to the 2010 Geneva Auto Show, they also introduced new technology that will help raise the auto maker as one of the top alternative fuel producers in the industry.
Our pals over at Car & Driver talked to Robert Davis, Mazda North America’s senior VP of quality and R&D, in Geneva. Davis dropped some very interesting news on their i-stop power train, hydrogen power and other fun developments at Mazda:
i-stop
This is what Mazda calls its engine stop/start system, which kills the engine at stops and already is available on the Mazda 3 in Europe. Rather than using the electric starter to re-fire the engine, as in other manufacturers’ versions of the technology, Mazda instead stops one of the cylinders at an advantageous point near the top of its stroke and fires that cylinder to get the engine restarted once the driver steps off the brake. The reason we haven’t yet seen i-stop—or most other companies’ versions—on U.S.-market cars is that the tech simply doesn’t have enough effect on EPA fuel-economy ratings.
Hybrids
Mazda is toying with the idea of hybridizing more of its lineup beyond the slow-selling Tribute hybrid, which is a clone of the Ford Escape hybrid, but Davis didn’t seem particularly bullish on the idea. As mentioned, weight is a concern—as is overall performance—and since Mazda is confident that it can reach looming federal efficiency requirements with some or all of the measures discussed here, it’s not convinced that more widespread hybridization is the way to go. We think part of the brand’s hesitancy to go hybrid could be pinned on financials; it costs a lot to develop your own hybrid powertrain, and licensing one from another company wouldn’t be cheap, either. When/if Mazda decides to more fully hybridize, we were told not to expect anything for at least ten years.
Diesel & Hydrogen
As we said, the plans will include diesel, too, if not in America then certainly in Europe, where Mazda already sells oil-burners. We had a chance to drive a CX-7 with a 2.2-liter diesel engine while we were in Geneva, and came away fairly impressed. (Again. Check out our initial drive of the vehicle for a more in-depth look.) A fair amount of turbo lag was our only real complaint. But we won’t see that engine in the U.S. market, should we actually get diesel Mazdas. The company would wait until the SKY-D engine is ready, and it is said to be a lot more drivable—i.e. less laggy.
We didn’t discuss this with Davis in Geneva, but hydrogen seems to be where Mazda’s sliding a decent chunk of its chips. Witness the rotary-engined, hydrogen-fueled RX-8s and 5s that have gone on lease in Norway and Japan in the past year or so. But given the current lack of meaningful hydrogen infrastructure in the U.S., they won’t come here anytime soon.
