Petrol, diesel and plug-in hybrid, but no EV version to fight Tesla Model Y
Despite the battery-powered Tesla Model Y electric SUV dominating sales in the premium mid-size SUV segment, Mazda insists its all-new combustion-engined CX-60 is the right model at the right time.
Rolling on a new rear-biased all-wheel drive platform, the new 2023 Mazda CX-60 goes on sale in Australia with three powertrains including 3.3-litre inline six-cylinder turbo-petrol and turbo-diesel mild-hybrids and a 2.5-litre four-cylinder petrol plug-in hybrid system.
Mazda is forecasting around 500 sales per month for the nine-variant CX-60 range, which equates to 6000 sales per year.
Hit that target and the CX-60 will comfortably outsell orthodox premium medium SUVs like the BMW X3, Audi Q5 and Lexus NX.
The problem is the Model Y is crushing them all when it comes to buyer numbers.
To the end of June 2023 Audi had sold 2404 Q5s in Australia, BMW 2045 X3s and Lexus 2767 examples of the NX. Tesla has sold 14,002 Model Ys in the same period.
The CX-60 range starts at just under $60,000 and tops out at $85,500 plus on-road costs.
Asked if Mazda should have launched an EV to fight Tesla rather than gone orthodox with an ICE-based CX-60 range, Mazda Australia managing director Vinesh Bindhi was emphatic in his answer.
“That would be an incorrect conclusion to reach,” he said. “When you look at where Australia is with EV – eight per cent and climbing is where it’s at.
“But one brand does 60 per cent of that eight per cent, which is Tesla.”
In an era where new ICE development programs are rare, Mazda’s inline sixes are all-new and the first six-cylinder engines to be offered in a Mazda passenger vehicle since the early-2000s Mazda 626 V6.
The I6 strategy is certainly premium, considering BMW has always preferred that set-up, while Mercedes-Benz and Jaguar have both swapped from V6 to I6 in recent times.
Bindhi argued ICE would remain a mainstay of local vehicle sales for years because Australia is only in the early stages of its EV transition.
He pointed out Australia is yet to introduce fuel-efficiency standards to encourage the uptake of EVs, putting us years behind other regions such as Europe, China and the US in this area.
Fuel standards legislation is expected to be presented to federal parliament later this year.
“When we look at other regions in the world, no-one else has gone overnight from ICE to battery EV. It is a transition,” Bindhi said.
“Europe has been onto this for about a decade. In Australia we have started in the last couple of years without any significant incentives; probably without the appropriate infrastructure in all parts of Australia; probably in the early stages of the transition to renewable energy.
“When you look at all that, where we are is toward the start [of the transition] rather than toward the end and we will have our journey.
“Maybe the transition will be shorter [here] than compared to [other] regions because all brands will have [EV] models available.
Mazda has announced a three-stage strategy towards embracing EVs, with plans to have them account for up to 40 per cent of global sales by 2030.
The first dedicated EVs based on a new Mazda scalable architecture are set to start rolling out in 2026-27.
But even then, Bindhi emphasised, Mazda will still be selling a significant number of ICE vehicles in Australia.
“In that timing when you look at the Australian population, not everyone will switch over to purely battery-electric.
“We will have to offer a multi-solution approach in Australia, because some buyers living in certain areas may not have access to the infrastructure, may not have based on their needs… vehicles that perform to where they want, or [be] purely not comfortable with it [EV].”
“So we are going to be in a position that will offer a lot of options.”
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Keyword: Mazda CX-60 powertrain choices defended