Mazda, as it allies up with fellow Japanese heavyweight, Toyota appears to have bigger strategies.
The team-up has showed the way to a outbreak of declaration on the partnership’s purpose, including joint EV tech development, a new factory in the US and a whole host of juicy product details.
The business enterprise is somewhat ironically being called a ‘business and capital alliance’, and is the next stage of a partnership that strictly ongoing back in May 2015. Read on as we make clear what it’s all about.
1) A Nissan Leaf competitor is on its way
There are plans to mutually develop electric vehicle tech ‘for the basic structure of competitive electric vehicles.’
Toyota may possibly be the king of hybrid tech but neither brand has actually got to grasp with full EV cars with much eagerness. Both brands have anything conventional enough to take on Nissan’s Leaf, for example, and European manufacturers are busy rolling their electric car development processes.
If ‘basic structure’ is something to be happy with, there could be a joint EV platform in the pipeline from Mazda and Toyota but it’s too early to blurt out anything.
2) A tech rebirth is on the prospect
Safety tech and Infotainment is another area of center for the business enterprise. Next to with R&D into improving the two brand’s multimedia systems, Mazda will be taking into account Toyota’s vehicle-to-vehicle tech and vehicle-to-infrastructure tech with severe interest with ‘the ultimate goal of creating a mobile society devoid of accidents.’
3)There will be model sharing
Mazda is by now ‘supplying a compact sedan to Toyota in North America’, which happens to be the Mazda 2-derived Toyota Yaris iA Sedan that’s built in Mexico. Toyota will provide its new colleague with a ‘compact commercial “two-box” van in Japan.’ There are also plans to share a little more in future.
4) A new joint US factory
The main news is the declaration of a new joint manufacturing plant in the US, with the aim to start manufacturing there in 2021. The $1.6bn assembly plant will be proficient enough of producing 300,000 vehicles a year and will make available around 4000 jobs for the US.
The new plant will be accountable for building the Toyota Corolla, which was initially intended to be built at Toyota’s new plant in Mexico next to an unnamed Mazda model. Toyota declares that the U-turn on where to fabricate the Corolla will have ‘no considerable collision on Toyota’s investment and employment there’ as the brand plans to manufacture the Tacoma pickup there in its place.
It ‘expects to produce crossover models that Mazda will newly introduce to the North American market’ at the new plant, as said by Mazda. The Mazda CX-3, CX-5 and CX-9 are already on sale in the US, so this could be one of Mazda’s upcoming coupe-SUV models.
