How & Why Mazda created the CX-90 PLUG IN HYBRID with Dave Coleman
Moto man has been hounding me for months to come tell you about this cx90 plug-in hybrid I’ve been working on secret stuff I can’t tell them about so it took until Christmas break before I could do it but here we are I’m going to talk about the
How and why we built the cx90 plugin Hybrid you’ll recall the inline 6 version had under the hood an inline 6 amazingly uh the plugin hybrid has the inline 4 which is actually the same basically the same 2.5 l super high compression naturally aspirated skyactive G engine that we have in a
Cx50 or a cx30 uh just turned 90° uh and shoved really far back in the engine bay you’ll notice this huge gap between the radiator and the engine this really reminds me of my old first gen RX7 I had an 83 uh that you’d open the hood and
There just you could like stand in front of the engine and this is you know this is sort of just miles of Heritage we’re so uh into the vehicle Dynamics and really want the this the center center of gravity as far back as possible want the mass really centralized so we pull
The power Trin back as far as we can um but what’s going on here that’s different than the n96 you’ll recall that car had uh six cylinders and then a small electric motor for a mild hybrid system that could stop the engine and restart it and do a little bit of torque
Fill uh to sort of fill in for Turbo lag and that kind of thing um and then it had the planetary gear 8-speed transmission where we are using wet clutches instead of a torque converter getting rid of the torque converter makes room for that that electric motor
So that’s how that whole system works um the plug-in hybrid on very simply we just make that motor a lot bigger and make the engine a lot smaller so so that we can do more with the motor and less with the engine now this confuses people a little bit because it’s pretty unusual
For a hybrid system to run an electric motor driving through a conventional transmission you’re used to electric cars typically will just have a direct drive electric motor with one gear and people tend to think that electric motors have just this infinite torque uh and and no power band at all they just
Make the same power everywhere that’s not quite true they make their Peak torque at zero RPM so they’re great for launching but then as the speed goes up the the torque potential of the motor drops uh and so in order to make enough torque to still accelerate when you’re
On the freeway uh you end up needing either a transmission or a really big motor if you’re just building an electric car it turns out it’s almost always easier just to put in a bigger motor and have one gear than it is to have a smaller motor and a two or
Three-speed transmission Porsche and Audi are the exception they put a two-speed transmission and a slightly smaller motor works out fine for them but this is a different situation where we already have a transmission because we have an engine that has to drive the wheels uh and if we already have an
Engine if we already have a transmission um then we’re better off driving the motor through that transmission we can use a small smaller motor uh and use that low RPM torque in every one of the gears the torque the the Power Band of the motor is closer to that of an engine
Uh there’s another reason why we want to use both the engine and the motor driving through the transmission uh it’s because it gives us a consistent uh performance on on the car that doesn’t make any sense let me explain how the transmission affects the steering and
Handling of the car um we are using the all-wheel drive system to really fine-tune the way the car hand handles uh especially in terms of the yaw damping of the chassis when you are turning into a corner um as you go through a corner the wheels need to turn
Slightly different speeds and as we connect or disconnect the front rear wheels to our all-wheel drive control uh we are making them want to go the same speed when they’re connected or making them free to go different speeds when they’re disconnected this creates a a
Damping of the ya motion of the car when we engage all wheeel drive system so even when you’re nowhere near the grip limit of the tires you don’t need the all-wheel drive system for traction we are manipulating the all-wheel drive system to fine-tune the yaw damping and
The the the handling motion of the car uh and by driving always through the same powertrain and through the same all-wheel drive system we have a consistent feeling uh from the steering and handling if we were to for example Drive the rear wheels with the engine and the
Front wheels with the electric motor which is a possibility but would be kind of awkward there are there are plenty of hybrids out there that that do this well they’ll drive the front wheels with an engine and the rear wheels with electric motor uh but then you have these
Different Dynamics when it’s rear drive and front drive and and you can’t really control uh the detailed steering response of the car this lets us get a very consistent driving feel uh between the plug-in hybrid and the inline six from a steering and handling Viewpoint now from a power chain Viewpoint that’s
Going to depend on which driving mode you’re in now the basic idea behind a plug-in hybrid is you should have enough electric Drive torque to get from home to work completely on electric motor get from work back to home completely on the electric motor and just use the engine
When you’re driving longer than your regular commute now if you live in Montana you don’t have a regular commute like that you should probably get the inline six um but if you do have a mind-numbing drudging commute through traffic uh we can leave the engine off entirely and just drive with the electric
Motor this gives you lots of different options of how to do it normally if you charge the battery at home uh and you start driving it will automatically use the best mix of engine and motor for how you’re driving and it actually shows you on the the dash uh
There’s a power meter that shows you how much power you’re putting out and what the limit is of the electric motor at that time with the amount of battery charge you have and you can try to actively stay out of the engine or you can just drive it normally and it’ll
Turn on the engine whenever it needs to and turns it off when it when it doesn’t need it but if you’re trying to do your commute completely on the motor you can switch the drive mode into EV mode and then it’ll let you use all the way down
To the the bottom of the pedal will just stay on the electric motor and only if you go into the kickdown switch you definitely need some power for some emergency situation then it’ll turn on the engine and just just go um but that gives you the flexibility to do this is
Rated at 25 or 26 I forget miles uh on the electric motor in the real world you’ll typically get better than that because you’re using this for commute and commute traffic is slow and EVS are more efficient when you’re driving slowly so I often go over 30 miles on
Just the electric motor all right so so far we’ve been talking about commuting and you know driving on just the electric motor but the thing is we’ve got about half the power on the motor and about half the power in the engine and if you want to drive fast and you go
Deeper in the throttle it’ll give you both at the same time it be pretty fast but what happens when the battery dies right then do you lose half your power it turns out that actually when we say the battery is dead it’s not really dead we leave enough charge in the battery
That then it can operate as a conventional hybrid so it has power in there to give you a boost of power when you’re accelerating and then when you’re cruising you’ll just Cruise uh on the engine the only time the battery really will deplete to the point where it can’t
Help you is if you’re going up a long long Mountain where it’s using both uh powertrains at the same time and eventually when the the battery gets low enough that it can’t help out with the motor then it’ll just downshift because we got eight gears uh and the Reds will
Go up uh and I’ve done obviously plenty of twisty Mountain Road driving cuz that’s what I do in these cars um I’ve chased GTRs up the mountains in this thing after the batteries depleted the handling uh is remarkably good uh when you get out in the places where we like
To play uh but the only real difference in the performance up there uh is once the battery’s depleted you’re just at higher revs uh you don’t really notice a big loss of power when the battery’s dead so motoman did a review of this car
Uh he said he didn’t like it he did a review of the I6 he said he did like it so what that tells me is he’s one of those Montana guys who likes the open road uh and if you live in someplace that’s just all Open Road the I6 is
Probably the one for you if you live in some place where gas is expensive and electricity is cheap and you have to commute uh and you want to drive uh without having to burn gas most of the time uh this is definitely the one for
You uh I think in in my if if I needed six more seats than I actually do this is probably the one I’d be driving because I do have to commute uh and drive in the city so there you go pick the one that works for you uh you go in
The comments and tell Moto man why he’s wrong I always like to see that um or you know maybe you’re for Montana maybe you want the I6 that’s fine I just found out something really interesting apparently there is a channel on you on uh Moto man’s thing of just me talking
About cars um if you want to suffer through more of that then you should go click on that he’ll go put a link here somewhere and you can you can do that uh otherwise uh do the socials and all the stuff that he tells you to do I don’t
Understand any of this stuff talk to you later Bye
The Master of All Technobabble at @MazdaUSA North America & President of Grumpy Old Man Racing, Dave Coleman is back! This time, Dave goes on a deep technical dive of how the Mazda engineering team created a PHEV version of the Mazda CX-90. He shares insight that involves Mazda history, commonalities with Porsche EVs as well as who the Mazda CX-90 PHEV is NOT meant for!
#Mazda #MazdaCX90 #CX90PHEV #DaveColeman #MazdaCX90PHEV
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2025 Mazda CX-70 TECH REVIEW @
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