2024 Mazda MX-30 R-EV – Can The Rotary Range Extender Save The MX-30?
Great news the rotary engine then made Mazda so famous is back however it’s not what you might expect because it’s not powering a sports car in fact it’s not even powering a car it’s just powering a generator Mazda’s range of rotary powered sports cars were legendary the
RX7 and the RX8 are names that make enthusiasts tingle I’ve only ever driven one rotary powered Mazda and it was an RX8 and it was a remarkably special experience such a cool little car that and the Buzzy two rotor wankle engine from under its Hood was a big part of
Why I found it exciting but that was the last exciting Mazda vehicle with a wankle engine the car I’m driving today also has a rotary engine under the hood this features a single 830 CC rotor that is not connected to this car’s Wheels in any way this can only mean one thing I’m
Driving the Mazda mx30 R EV with r standing for rotary and EV for electric vehicle Mazda Brands this vehicle a plug-in hybrid although that’s just because plug-in hybrid is a buzzword these days and if they were to call it by its real name which is an ER EV an extended range electric vehicle car buyers most of whom seem quite confused about the degrees of
Electrification in a vehicle so they can’t really tell the difference between a mild hybrid a hybrid and sometimes even a plug-in hybrid and if Mazda would have called this an ER EV nobody would have known what it is and it certainly has a lot of the characteristics of a
Plug-in hybrid where this differs from the vast majority of plug-in hybrids except the new Honda CRV plug-in hybrid although there’s an asterisk there as well is in the fact that this car’s engine never ever drives the wheels in this car there is no clutch to engage it
To the wheels like there is in the aformentioned Honda so it only ever acts as a generator so let me give you a bit of background on the mx30 Rev in late 2019 early 2020 Mazda launched its first mass Market EV the D mx30 which was
Similar in many ways at least in terms of its philosophy not its looks or configuration but it was similar to the Honda e it was a vehicle with unusual design but with too small a battery for many electric vehicle buyers to even consider with the gross capacity of 35.5
KW hours and the usable capacity closer to 30 the pure electric mx30 struggled to reach 200 km on one charge in fact it kind of couldn’t and that’s the reason why even though electric vehicles have gone up in popularity considerably in Europe you see them all around major
Towns and even smaller towns you hardly ever see an mx30 and that’s a shame because like the Honda e this looks very unique and I think quite nice I enjoy looking at an mx30 on the rare occasion that I see one in traffic in fact I
Think I see more Honda e in bucharest’s congested traffic than I do MX 3030’s amus ly yesterday evening when I was just driving around trying to get a feel for this car I saw two mx30 is although both were the EV version Mazda even sold the fully electric version of the mx30
In the United States where it was discontinued because nobody bought one so not wanting to give up on the mx30 Mazda has now created the range extender which gets about half the ev’s battery pack so around 17.5 KW hours gross and probably closer to 15 usable the car can
Drive a claimed 85 km on average wltp on electricity alone which seems just about right given how low the fully electric versions range is but when the battery gets to between 40 and 50% state of charge the generator will kick in to replenish it and keep it between 40 and
50% Mazda actually gives two wltp figures for this vehicle so one is 85 km and the other is 115 km if you only drive it in an urban environment I have charged it once and I never saw it above 63 so not even 85 however if you have a
Full battery and a full tank Mazda says you should achieve around 600 km out of this car which I can’t imagine because it has a 50 L tank so a pretty big tank you can charge this car in around 50 minutes via an 11 KW 3-phase AC charger
It does do support DC fast charging but it isn’t especially fast so all you need is a 50 Kow charger but the car will only draw up to 36 KW from it and that’s enough to charge it from 20 to 80% in around 25 minutes one cool feature of
The mx30 both versions of it is that it offers v2l or vehicle to load it has a couple of traditional wall outlets but they are not in the wall they’re in the car one of them is under the center console here and there’s another one in
The trunk and you can can plug whatever you want in them as long as it doesn’t need more than 1.5 KW of power you have paddles behind the steering wheel to control energy recuperation via brake regeneration and while it’s certainly more powerful than in the Honda CRV pH
EV that I drove a couple of months back it’s not as powerful as in the most popular EVS many of which offer one pedal driving which the mx30 does not so the car has three driving modes you have have EV mode which forces the battery to
Use up all of its electricity so it will drop below 40% which it doesn’t in normal mode although when it drops below 20% even in EV mode the car may still start up the engine and there’s also a charge mode where you can set your desired state of charge so whenever you
Put it in charge mode it always brings up this prompt on the infotainment asking you if you want to change your desired set state of charge which you probably don’t every time you put it in charge mode the Rev version of the mx30 is more powerful than the pure electric
Variant that makes 145 horsepower and Sprints to 100 kmph from a standstill in 9.7 seconds but this has 170ps or 167 horsepower and it accelerates to 100 kmph from knot in 9.1 seconds the Rev version is also around 145 150 kg heavier even though it has half the
Battery and the battery pack is usually the heaviest component in an EV but because it also has the combustion engine under the hood and the gas tank and some additional auxiliaries the weight does go up to me this feels just as slow as the regular electric variant this is still reasonably good at
Accelerating and overtaking as you can see it’s an EV and it gives you its power instantly or almost instantly because the more new EVS I drive the more I’m observing that manufacturers are dulling down the instant response of electric motors because people apparently find them a bit too brisk
Sometimes and some manufacturers have even had to cut the torque because people had a problem with their vehicle having too much torque and delivering it too brutally and I am of course talking about the Kia Nero which had 395 Newt M of torque in its most powerful guys and
Now I think it’s down to under 300 and you could do a really really cool burnout in one of those from behind the wheel you do hear the combustion engine in the mx30 r starting up occasionally and then cutting out let me put it back
In normal mode so it was in charge mode and it boosted the battery from 40 to 50% and now I’ve put it in normal mode and okay now it’s finally cut out but it doesn’t cut out immediately when you put it in normal mode although it would I’m
Sure if you put it directly from charge mode into EV mode I will note that you definitely feel the vibration when the wanko wakes up especially at lower speeds in town and it’s not as refined as the two rotor deal that I experienced under the hood of the RX8 you should
Really check out my video on that I had a lot of fun that day so maybe it’s because this is a single rotor that you feel more vibration and maybe it has something to do with its construction and how it’s engineered because Mazda says one rotor in this even though I
Think it’s a bit higher capacity in fact I’m sure it’s a bit higher capacity than the one in the RX8 but it is about 15 kg lower thanks to the use of some aluminium or aluminum when you show the mx30 Rev a corner it reacts just as pleasantly as the nonv variant the
Steering is very very good it’s better than in some BMWs that I’ve driven and yes BMW you should get your act together and body control is very very good there is some lean but not a lot and the car settles very nicely into the bends and even sudden Direction changes don’t
Unsettle it that much it would have felt a bit sportier with some bigger wheels and lower profile tires but since this is not in any way a sporty vehicle although it kind of looks like one the 18in wheels that it comes with are perfectly adequate unlike most manufacturers that now only offer
Touchscreen controls for the climate Mazda gives you a choice you can either press the physical buttons or do the same via the Redundant controls on the screen when it comes to practicality the mx30 falls apart a little bit its trunk can only accommodate 370 L worth of your
Stuff and the back seat isn’t usable for carrying full-sized adults access to the rear seat is also not ideal the rear doors are rear hinged like in the RX8 and also the BMW i3 which is somewhat similar to this I would say the I3 was a
Pure EV which BMW also offered as a range extender although at one point the I3 I think was the second most popular EV in the world after the Nissan Leaf so maybe if Mazda launched the mx30 in about 2015 it would have had a shot but
It arrived I guess 5 years too late when the competition was Far Far stiffer and there were far bigger battery pack EVS available granted the mx30 isn’t that expensive here in Romania it starts at just under $38,000 and interestingly Mazda offers both versions with the same starting
Price so whether you want the pure electric or the range extender version you are going to pay exactly the same my tester today is the top-of-the-line Edition r model which comes with everything available on the mx30 and it costs from around $44,000 it features special embossed headrests and I think the seat
Upholstery is unique to this version and I think the sunroof but this is the most expensive one it has electric front seats with the memory function for the driver heated seats a heated steering wheel and a decent but not amazing Bose sound system frankly I don’t think this
Is the version you should buy and you should try to get the cheapest one although you will probably miss some of the safety features for instance this has blind spot monitoring and cross traffic alert and and it also has a reasonably good 360° around view camera system which
Helps you maneuver this vehicle whose um visibility at least out the back isn’t the best and part of this also makes being a passenger in the rear a bit unpleasant so not only is there not enough space for you to feel comfortable but you also can’t see out very well
Because while in other vehicles you have a big side window to look out through in this it’s split by um C pillar because this car also has a d-pillar so the C pillar is almost smack bang in the center of your line of sight when you’re
Sitting in the back so with this sporty dark headliner it just feels a bit too dark so should you buy an mx30 rev well as a pure EV at least with the small battery that Mazda equips it with I don’t think this makes much sense even though it’s a fairly affordable EV
Because depending on where you live in Europe your government might be willing to chip in quite a considerable amount if you buy it so in Romania it used to be €10,000 but starting in 2024 it’s 5,000 if you want to buy a new EV and
It’s half that if you want to buy a plug-in hybrid but even though you get less money from your government if you buy a phev or in this case a range extender I think in the case of the mx30 the version that also uses Gas makes the
Most sense the experience of driving it is so much more relaxed than the pure EV which is one of the most range anxiety inducing EVS that I’ve ever driven with its small battery but this even though you occasionally get a chainsaw noise from under the hood overall it’s a
Pleasant vehicle it drives well it’s pretty comfortable even though it has a torsion beam rear suspension setup which isn’t the most sophisticated but Mazda has made it work so if you don’t want to carry passengers in the back too often or if they are not tall passengers then
This actually makes a lot of sense it’s reasonably affordable for a plug-in Hy and it has a very very pleasant and enjoyable interior with unusual materials I think this is from recycled bottles or something and you also get the cork however I would only recommend this vehicle if you can commit to
Charging it regularly preferably every day because if you do charge it you can get close to masda claimed efficiency of .8 L per 100 km while if you don’t charge it it can use over 7 L per 100 km maybe even more I think that’s all I
Have to say about the the mx30 r I’ve been Andre you’ve been watching one tire fire and I’ll see you in the next video
The Mazda MX-30 is a pleasant EV, but because of its small battery and limited practicality, it’s never been a big sales hit. Now Mazda has launched a range extender version with a smaller battery and a rotary engine under the hood to alleviate the pure-electric variant’s range anxiety. It’s on sale in Europe right now and while it’s a lot better than the BEV version, has it got what it takes to woo plug-in hybrid buyers its way?
Written, presented, shot, and edited by Andrei Nedelea.
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