In recent times, the media has been swarmed with news around electric cars and the future of the diesel engine, so it’s tempting to think the internal combustion engine maybe on the way out. After all, more and more automotive manufacturers are promising to reduce emissions every year and potentially looking to go electric across their model line-up.
Mazda has been looking at doing something different though, as in truth the internal combustion engine is going to power the vast amount of vehicles for at least the next 50 years. Mazda has realised this and has tasked its R&D department to improve the gasoline engine today to maximise benefits over the next half-century.
Sustainable Zoom-Zoom 2030
Mazda’s fuel economy and emissions development program is called Sustainable Zoom-Zoom 2030, it’s declared to reduce complete “well-to-wheel” CO2 emissions to 50% of 2010 levels by 2030, and just 10% by 2050.
Well-to-wheel is an important concept, as 40% of the world’s electricity is generated by burning coal. Coal contributed to 39% of global CO2 emissions, according to National Geographic magazine. This means, it doesn’t matter if your electric car has no emissions if its power comes from a power plant burning coal. Furthermore, industry estimates that 84.4% of vehicles built from now until 2050 will have some kind of combustion engines, whether it’s the primary engine, part of a hybrid, or an EV range extender. Therefore, Mazda believes improving the efficiency of the gasoline engine is a vital step to reduce the total systemic emissions in the transportation sector.
SKYACTIV Concept
Mazda plans in the next decade to introduce new hybrids and electric vehicles, but they are also focusing on the combustion engine due to it taking a huge share of the vehicles sold in the industry. Mazda’s investment is to focus on new engine technology, chassis and transmission refinements that lead to less weight lower aerodynamic drag and reduce energy loss.
