Mazda announces a sports electric car equipped with a rotary range extender

Mazda is looking for ways to keep the fun of driving simple and lightweight sports cars like the MX-5Miata in the world of electric vehicles.

One of the solutions that the automaker presented at the Tokyo 2023 Auto Show on Wednesday was to fix most electric vehicles by choosing a smaller battery in combination with a range extender, in this case a compact and lightweight rotary engine.1 The main thing is to avoid a lot of weight, which is unacceptable.

However, the iconic SP is a sports car with a fixed roof and a slightly larger area than the Miata, and, as previously thought, the future Miata

The style of the iconic SP is also borrowed from the Mazda RX-Vision concept shown at the 2015 Tokyo Motor Show, gives it general view. The shape and proportions are more like an RX sports car than a Miata. Looking inside, you can see the Spartan interior and automatic transmission.

The concept also weighs about 3,200 pounds, which is about 1,000 pounds heavier than the current Miata. To compensate for the extra weight, the power is 370 horsepower, or about 2 times more than the current Miata.

Mazda did not provide details about the powertrain, but reported that the range extender is a compact twin-rotor rotary engine with a scalable design and flexibility to run on various fuels, including hydrogen.

Using a rotary engine as a range extender for electric vehicles is no longer just a Mazda idea. The automaker launched just such a setup with the MX-30 compact electric crossover in several markets earlier this year, albeit with a single-rotor rotor (adding more rotors is similar to adding more cylinders in a conventional engine). The MX-30 battery with extended range and the R-EV logo is half the size of a conventional MX-30 battery and has a capacity of only 17.8 kWh. Mazda estimates that with a full tank of gasoline and a fully charged battery, the extended range of the MX-30 can travel more than 300 miles.

At the presentation in Tokyo, Mazda CEO Masahiro Moro said that the concept is a "dream" solution for Mazda cars that can bring the joy of driving in the era of electrification, and automakers are making every effort to bring it to market.