Mazda MX-30

A recent news item on BBC Northern Ireland revealed that some 58% of current EV owners would consider going back to petrol or diesel due to the dearth of recharging facilities in the area.

Exactly the same accusations of public plug paucity may be levelled at Mudfordshire, my local slice of the rural idyll, which makes spending a week with an electric car good for just 124 miles (or up to 165 miles of urban pottering) before it starts panting for a volt jolt an interesting proposition…

Alas, the debate over the MX-30’s relatively small range has somewhat overshadowed the gently wholesome merits of the car in general, yet Mazda’s argument as to why it should be fitted with a small, relatively lightweight (310 kg) battery pack delivering just 35.5 kWh is entirely cogent…

Mazda is the first manufacturer in recent times to call for a ‘well-to-wheel’ measurement of emissions. And this, in the context of EVs, takes into account the CO₂ generated by the fossil-fuelled power station that provides your electricity, not merely the zero emissions of the car itself.

Applying the same reasoning to an EV’s battery pack, making a large, 75 kWh battery clearly involves a great deal more energy and raw materials. This, in turn, contributes significantly to the embedded environmental cost of the car, and the length of time you must run it before it betters the ongoing consumption and pollution of a conventionally powered car.

The smaller battery effectively halves the additional environmental impact over a conventional car. So, whereas most large battery EVs will only give a return on that initial CO₂ investment by the time a conventional car is due for replacement, the MX-30 is designed to bring the ‘break even’ point sufficiently far forward to benefit the initial owner of the car.

So, for Mazda, it’s all about range segmentation: The company’s digital service record shows that the average journey of a Mazda owner is 26 miles. With home charging, your daily mileage requirement is well within the range of the MX-30 and you start each day with a full battery. 

To have a car with a bigger battery merely increases your CO₂ footprint. You end up using a lot of the battery energy just to move the battery itself (batteries are sodding heavy), and with fewer miles driven you’re not using the battery efficiently and the costs are greater.

None of which, admittedly, will be of the remotest consolation to the man utterly out of juice in a lay-by on the A43 near Rugby…

Then again, given that the MX-30 can be recharged to 80% capacity in 35-40 minutes at a public fast charger, a car thus stranded is far more likely to be the victim of gross infrastructure inadequacy than it is insufficient battery capacity.

So now, if you’re still with me, to the car itself…

The MX-30’s couture walks a fine line between that which we know and have come to somewhat relish from Mazda, and the tweakage deemed necessary to identify it as an all-electric offering.

So the front becomes a careful meld of Mazda’s signature grille -albeit after a couple of hours in the boil wash- and the bows of the marvellous 1960s Amphicar 770. Or is that just me? In profile, meanwhile, a combination of sloping roofline and rufty-tufty plastic nappy cladding to the nether regions speaks of the smaller sporting SUV.

The whole is, to this jaded eye, quite handsome in an understated way, but remarkably colour-sensitive to boot; it needs the two-tone treatment to bring it alive. And even then, choose with care.

Then there are the rear, back-hinged suicide doors, which, after a brief rummage through their modus operandi, instantly bring the ff-C family motto to mind: It Seemed a Good Idea at the Time.

Alas, the idea is unquestionably better than the reality. You can’t open (or close) the rear door unless you’ve got the front open first, and, apart from giving you a glorious technicolour side view of the entire front seat, the system doesn’t actually bring anything useful to the party.

True; it’s pleasing to not be molested from behind by an over-amorous door when you’re strapping nippers into child seats, but even with the rear door out of the way, you’ll still need to tip the front seat forwards to gain decent face-on access to that fiddly, sticky-fingered buckle.

And it’s decidedly chthonic in the back. What tinting gives the external appearance of a large rear side window is in fact two small ones, the rearmost nought but porthole sized. Indeed, the rear door card disguises so much added safety chunk that it looks more like the door of an old safe than that of a car.

Up front, however, it’s all- to paraphrase John Le Mesurier on his deathbed- rather lovely. Once again we find a marriage of staple Mazda and the otherworldly; in this case the latter being environmental rather than electric.

So, complementing clear, analogue-style instrumentation, a centre screen still mercifully operated by a centre console-mounted control knob, and -a new departure- a touch-screen air-conditioning control panel, we find fabrics interwoven with recycled PET bottles, a vegan alternative to real leather and, in celebration of day one of Mazda’s 100 year-old heritage, cork.

And this isn’t the cork of kitchen nerve-centre pinboards; rather it’s compressed, treated for tactility, longevity and water resistance, and elegantly smoothed into the assorted trays surrounding the flying centre console (and folding down to cover the odious cup holders -Hoorah). There’s even a sliver cladding the back of the inside door handle. It may be a generational thing, but somehow, touching cork always makes thirsty…

The driving position’s first rate, and the only annoyance to report on pulling away for the first time is that, suddenly, the lane keep assistant control has gone from the single switch which stays off, forever after, in Mazdas of yore, to a setting buried in the touch screen which you have to re-visit every time you start the car.

Once pinged into forward motion by that strangely elastic band-sponsored feeling of acceleration unique to electric motors generating maximum torque from zero rpm, we unearth yet more melding; Mazda seems to have pulled off the neat trick of making the MX-30 drive like a tidy combination of ICE and EV.

Unexpected levels of agility may in part be attributed to the fact that it weighs 112 bags of sugar less that a Kia Soul EV and a whopping 149 less than VW’s ID3, and the subtly piped overdub of engine sound can only add to the ICE perception (truth is, though, that the MX-30, like all cars except the very rortiest, generates sufficient tyre and wind noise at speed to relegate engine sounds -even artificial ones- very much to the background).

But driving pleasure has been the company byword for an age now, so it’s a certainty that a deal of fettling went into the nicely weighted, accurate steering, pleasingly supple ride and topple-free cornering. Even the brakes offer more feel than those of many an EV.

This latter, I suspect, is down to the tuning offered by helm-mounted flappy paddles, which alter the amount of retardation associated with regenerative braking. Not, at one extreme, to the extent of total one pedal operation, mind – you’ll still need the brakes even with the setting for maximum recharge on throttle lift off, but only to come to a complete standstill.

What’s better for maximum range though? Minimum retard for maximum freewheeling effect when you lift off, or maximum retard with less freewheeling? One gives more charge, the other more distance… Answers, postcard, etc.

There is, it strikes me, something of a paradox in making a car good to drive by lowering battery capacity, hence weight. It encourages you to press on, which, in turn, gulps battery power all the more quickly.

But driving pleasure has been the company byword for an age now, so it’s a certainty that a deal of fettling went into the nicely weighted, accurate steering, pleasingly supple ride and topple-free cornering. Even the brakes offer more feel than those of many an EV.

This latter, I suspect, is down to the tuning offered by helm-mounted flappy paddles, which alter the amount of retardation associated with regenerative braking. Not, at one extreme, to the extent of total one pedal operation, mind – you’ll still need the brakes even with the setting for maximum recharge on throttle lift off, but only to come to a complete standstill.

What’s better for maximum range though? Minimum retard for maximum freewheeling effect when you lift off, or maximum retard with less freewheeling? One gives more charge, the other more distance… Answers, postcard, etc.

There is, it strikes me, something of a paradox in making a car good to drive by lowering battery capacity, hence weight. It encourages you to press on, which, in turn, gulps battery power all the more quickly.