You have to admire Mazda’s plucky, contrarian spirit. It’s a company of engineering independence and freedom of thought almost to the point of lunacy.
It persisted with rotary engines long after others realised that was a waste of time, leading to some of the most temperamental but characterful cars of all time. And while every other carmaker dealt with tightening emissions regulations by downsizing engines from eight and six cylinders to four and three, Mazda kept the bigger units but redesigned them from the ground up for unheard of efficiency.
And just a few years ago, long after most mainstream carmakers had dumped diesel engines, it brought out the 3.3-litre e-Skyactiv D six-cylinder oil-burner for the CX-60 and CX-80 SUVs.
It’s probably not surprising, then, that Mazda has been a critic of the electric car age, but it has still had to play the game in an effort to stay on the right side of legislation, which is why five years ago it brought out the MX-30 EV. Mazda chose to give it a small battery so it could keep weight to a minimum and that gave it an official range of only 124 miles. With prices at about £30,000, it wasn’t a big seller.
So here we are with a second attempt — one aimed more at the mass market. Mazda thinks its 6e fastback (saloon looks, hatchback boot) is a match for rivals such as the Tesla Model 3 and the BYD Seal.
The Mazda 6e is competitively priced, has an official range of 348 miles and can add 240 miles of range in 24 minutes at a 200kW rapid chargerMazda
It’s priced from £38,995, which many of you won’t think is cheap, but it’s a larger car than the MX-30, seating five and with a more spacious boot, plus an additional luggage space under the bonnet. More importantly, officially it can manage 348 miles a charge from the 77kWh (usable) battery and, amazingly, that’s close to what I got in the real world. I averaged 4.28 miles a kWh, which would mean 342 miles before running out of juice.
And while it’s a grand dearer than the entry-level Tesla, the Mazda 6e can go up to 25 miles further before plugging in, and it’s roughly £6,000-£12,000 cheaper than equivalent rivals such as the BYD Seal, Hyundai Ioniq 6 and Volkswagen ID7. The Mazda also beats everything but the Hyundai in charging times, with speeds of up to 200kW allowing 10-80 per cent recharge (adding about 240 miles) in 24 minutes.
The boot can hold 337 litres of luggageMazda
There’s an additional 72-litre front luggage compartment, which is ideal for charging cablesMazda
All of which is impressive for a small-fry carmaker that refuses to be absorbed wholesale into a conglomerate. How has Mazda done this? In its traditionally pragmatic style of teaming up with another carmaker, of course. And who do you turn to for an affordable electric car? The Chinese, naturally.
Mazda is able to say the 6e is its own car, built in a Mazda factory that happens to be based in China, but the truth is it’s based on underpinnings from a company called Changan (in a joint venture called Changan Mazda), that are also used for the China-only Mazda EZ-6 and a car called the Deepal L07.
Mazda can be credited with the 6e’s design and chassis tuning and that means it’s a perfectly pleasant car to drive. I covered nearly 160 miles in it over five hours, driving from Liverpool to north Wales and back, and found it a decent motorway cruiser (though with noticeable road noise from the tyres) with enough punch from its rear-mounted, 254bhp electric motor for confident overtakes at higher speeds.
It’s on twisty roads that the car is a bit of a letdown, but it’s a comfortable cruiserMazda
There’s seating for five, but the fastback roofline means rear headroom is compromised, and the underfloor battery means knees end up well above the hip pointMazda
Show it a twisty Welsh backroad and the 6e struggles with a chassis set-up that can feel a bit at sixes and sevens, but that’s not really the point of the 6e — this is designed for execs who want a long-range, sleek, comfortable, attractive EV.
And the Mazda 6e is attractive — the exterior has won a design award, no less. The interior is pleasing too, though again the Chinese influence was immediately apparent to me because I’d driven to Liverpool in a car called the Aion V (review to come).
Aion is part of the GAC Group, so not part of Changan, but going from one car to the other revealed a few striking similarities, like the floating central dash element, the seemingly identical hardware for the central touchscreen and digital driver’s display, the position of the air vents and the twin phone holders on a floating centre console with storage underneath.
The interior is smart, but after driving it back-to-back with the Aion V, Dron was struck by a number of similaritiesMazda
The Aion V is made by a different Chinese manufacturer but similarities include the central touchscreen, twin phone holders and the position of the 12v sockets under the floating centre consolesAion Auto UK
Even the 12v sockets are in almost the same place and have similar cruise control systems with the same way of activating them (double pull down on the Drive selector stalk, which in itself is a copy Tesla’s system). And both cars bing and bong at you for not paying attention to the road when you are.
All of which suggests that even rival Chinese carmakers are using off-the-shelf interior components and electronics, and this only gives credence to Jeremy Clarkson’s argument that all new EVs are white goods with no personality. There are exceptions, I’d argue, but for how much longer?
The design is distinctive and a clear alternative to an SUVMazda
Which is all rather depressing, so I’d better lighten the mood by saying that Mazda deserves credit for managing to bring to market an EV that is a genuine rival for the Tesla Model 3, because it’s a perfectly decent car to drive and undercuts its rivals by significant amounts of money. The fact that it did that by getting into bed with the Chinese makes it less easy to avoid giving Elon Musk your hard-earned pounds… but then the Model 3 is built in China too.
Sorry, I said I’d lighten the mood. Erm. At least the Mazda 6e should be successful enough to keep Mazda going, and that’s a good thing.