Mazda Aiming for Larger SKYACTIV-X Engine in North America?
The last time we wrote about Mazda’s SKYACTIV-X engine was in March of last year following our first drive of the all-new Mazda3.
At the time, the folks at Mazda Canada said they were still considering the possibility to bring in this revolutionary powerplant, but we quickly understood that the odds of finally seeing it here were extremely small.
- Also: The Car Guide’s Best Technology for 2019: Mazda SKYACTIV-X
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In Japan, where the 178-horsepower, 2.0-litre SKYACTIV-X is currently available, customers benefit from a 9-percent gain in fuel economy along with 15 percent more power versus the base 2.0-litre SKYACTIV-G engine, but they must pay an MSRP that’s 27-percent higher, The Truth About Cars reports.
Initially, we were led to believe that the improvement in fuel economy would be more around 20 percent. Regardless, it’s not the kind of math that drivers in North America care about, according to Mazda. “Maybe customers require more power, because fuel economy is not the top requirement,” said one of the company’s engineers, Yoshiaki Yamane.
So, what happens now? Here’s what Eiji Nakai, Mazda’s executive officer for powertrain development, had to say in a recent interview with Automotive News:
“We think this SKYACTIV-X can be used for larger engine displacement in the future, in line with our product planning.”
He added Mazda is already running simulations to determine how the latest SKYACTIV technology would perform on engines with larger displacements.
The introduction of a larger and more powerful SKYACTIV-X engine—rumoured to be a longitudinally mounted inline six-cylinder—would coincide with the launch of a new large-vehicle architecture that Mazda is developing and planning by 2023.
The combo would serve both SUV and passenger car applications, possibly starting with the next-generation Mazda6 and expanding to a new sports car based on the 2015 RX-Vision concept.
One thing is for sure, Mazda is dead set on continuing to maximize the efficiency of combustion engines by using all the cool tricks it can find, with the reasoning that conventional vehicles still have much more appeal among customers than hybrids and EVs.
