The Mazda MX-30 R-EV Revives the Rotary…But It's Absolutely NOT What You Think!

As you know, we just uh did a video on the Tesla pricing and now weve got breaking news from Mazda because get this the rotary is back yeah right. So the legendary spinning burrito has returned from a brand new Mazda, but its not exactly what you think it might be, so youre probably expecting like an RX7 or an RX8 or an RX 9 as it may be, but were getting a rotary as a range extender Of sorts in a hybrid powered vehicle lets do some backup before we get to the facts and all the information weve got a lot of it here about the new 2024 Mazda MX 30 rev. Now you know that the mx 30 came out. What about a year ago, because you went to the launch – tell me about that car yeah, so its a fully electric EV. But if you read between the lines. In my opinion, it was largely a compliance California, compliance car to meet regulation because it was a little disappointing on paper were talking like a mid 30 000 starting price, but only 100 miles of EPA estimated range now um. This car got a lot of hate from the American Press. I actually drove it. I really really liked it theres a lot of cool things to like about it, but it just didnt meet the biscuit in terms of range for U.S consumers and when Mazda first announced that car they said that there was going to be one with the Rex and Of course Rex stands for range extender, which is similar to the BMW i3, but when they brought it to America, I think what caused a lot of people to scratch.

Their heads was that there was no wrecks. It was a pure EV, but now the Rex is back. This may not look like it, but this is one of the rarest cars ever because this is an Acura RSX Type S in bone stock condition. You got to check this thing out. These cars were incredibly popular with the tuning community and they were slammed in stands and had engine mods. But this thing is a unicorn because its completely stock – and it looks really good in stock configuration. Now. Everybody bought these and they changed out the seats and the steering wheel and the shift knob. But why Acura put so much time and effort in developing the perfect steering wheel and the perfect shift knob that a stock one is going to be, in my opinion, way. Better than the modified one – and the best part is if you want to own this exact car its up for auction right now with tflbusiness.com. There cant be many of these, like this left in the world, now were saying Rex, which stands for range extender and well get into that a little bit on how it works, because its not really a Rex, like the I3, was its actually pretty different. Now lets see what were getting here so, first of all, the Mazda debuted, this uh mx 30r e v R Dash EV yeah rev, rev sort of kind of at the Brussels Motor Show. Its full name is the Mazda mx, 30e skyactiv r ev, not a great name yeah and all the information we currently have centers around the European model, including all of our photos, so keep in mind uh.

This may change were what were getting is in quite a range extender like an I3 and lets talk about that Tommy, its more of a philosophically plug in hybrid. So the way the I3 works is you have a battery and then theres a gas engine. A 600 CC Kimco that basically recharged this battery when the battery gets down to like six percent right but hang on. It was more of a supplemental way to get the electric car to a charger so and the BMW was never really intended to be driven on gasoline alone because of the tiny displacement of the tiny horsepower output yeah, and we had that car uh Andre actually has It now his wife uh drives it and we try driving it up to Loveland, uh ski area up to level and pass, and we ran out of battery and going up from Georgetown, which gets very steep uh. Remember we were doing like 25 miles an hour. You know running that car off the range extender which was terrifying on I 70 and then like 16 miles an hour going up to the top of Loveland Pass so youre right. It wasnt meant to actually be driven that way, and you know that, because the fuel tank in an I3 was only around two and a bit gallons, it was like two, it was 2.6 and it was they put it in jail. Actually, we had a Jailbreaker because thats another story lets not go there, but hang on what you need to know is on a range extender.

The car has to go further on electricity than gasoline and thats. What the I3 does. The Mazda is different, so the Standard Electric mx 30 has a 35 and a half kilowatt hour battery good for 100 miles of range. The range extend and one has a 17.8 kilowatt hour battery. Yes, its about half the size and its only good for about 53 miles of range, but where its different from the I3 is that it has a much larger fuel tank. So it has a 13.2 gallon fuel tank versus the BMW, which had like two ish yeah. Its basically the same size, fuel tank as the Mazda 3, which means that the tank feeds an 803 CC single rotor engine Tommy that functions as a generator. In other words, this is a series. Hybrid, the gas engine does not directly power the wheels kind of like a train locomotive. Now what you got remember about rotary powered engines. Is you hear 803 CCs youre, probably thinking? Oh my gosh its going to have no horsepower whatsoever, but you got to consider the high output relative to the small displacement that a rotary engine provides. If you look back at like the old rx7s, those are typically only between like one liter and 1.3 liters 1.5 liters. They were really pretty small engines um in terms of its overall displacement, because of how the rotary rotor works. Now we dont know the horsepower on this model, so a fun fact, though, what the First new Carver bot was a Mazda RX 7.

I am aware anyway, so well, you get less electric range. The bigger gas tank does put the mx 30 in a much better position for long range, usability, estimated Tommy 373 miles of range or 600 kilometer on a full charge and a full tank of gas compared to the pure EVS 100 miles. Now, what we is interesting right – and this is why its kind of exciting to me is that rotors are a very compact engine which makes a lot of sense for range extended vehicle, so youre, probably thinking well, I mean, if its a range, extenders or um. It makes a lot of sense for a plug in hybrid vehicle too, because you can pack a ton of punch in a small little unit yeah. So while the electric motor uh in the mx 30r EV is more powerful than the standard car, it has a 164 horsepower 21 more than the standard EV yeah, but it has slightly less torque at 192 versus 200. I would love to know that output of the gasoline engine itself thatd be pretty cool. I dont think we have that number its about 300 pounds heavier than the Bev, even though it has half the battery capacity, and the engine itself is just about 33 pounds lighter than the Dual rotor setup we had in the old RX8. So how fast is it from 0 to 60. well, 9.1 seconds down from 9.7, so not a sports car, but still pretty quick and once again this is a Serial hybrid or oh, my gosh, my brain, a series hybrid, and what that means is that theres, no Connection between the rotary and the wheels all the rotor does is power.

The battery all right so lets talk about charging because, of course, electric vehicles are all about charging. So tell me how fast is the charge or what? How does it charge? Well, it does technically support DC fast charging um, which is still pretty unusual for like a plug in hybrid, but only up to 36 kilowatts. So if you consider in the world of EVS like a lot of new cars, now are pulling over 236 is very, very slow, theyre, saying a 20 to 80 charging on the 17.8 kilowatt hour. Battery takes 25 minutes, which is a long time for a little battery. Yeah for reference, the Hyundai ionic 5 can charge at 77.4 kilowatts on a 350 kilowatt charger. In less time. It can actually charge a lot quicker than that. Can it yeah so uh with the ioniq, 5 77.4 kilowatt hours were talking 10 to 80 percent. In like 18 minutes now, the full mx 30v can support up to 50 kilowatts of fast charging. Now, what is it going to cost? Well, we dont know uh how much the mx 30rev will cost, but it will arrive in the US during the 2023 model year. So sometime in the next several months, and it will hit Europe to Europe thats already up on the Mazda UKs consumer website. Uks pricing starts around the equivalent to ‘ 000 US dollars, but thered be EV. Pricing and rotary extend EV start at about the same point, which is interesting, so itd be awesome if they could bring it here for under 40 Grand.

If the UK price translates to the US version, then the Rev will start somewhere in the mid 30. 000 range yeah, so for the 2023 Mazda MX 30 EV starts at 35 thats, not the range extended one thats, just a regular one, uh and uh. You know those things. I was actually doing some poking around on dealer websites in California and theyre selling for less money now, because people I think, have found that 100 miles of range is just its a city car base. Whats, interesting, though, is people always focus on that, but as a car to drive, it was wonderful. You have this CL this kind of funky interior with these clamshell doors which people dont like, but in the cork it is fun. It has cork on the inside. Only a few cars has cork trim. I love the ride, quality and the Dynamics it really drives. The car back up there instead of the rotary engine lets, show them that okay, there we go um and then um, I I know its coming. You got to give it a sec, well that computer is uh very slow, well, its ancient its like eight years old, okay, the UK spec car, gets three trim levels here. I want to show you this. This is pretty cool. Okay, this is the uh the setup here now. The funny thing is on the fully electric version. When you open up the hood, you have this massive void under the hood, which, as you can see, is being occupied now by the gasoline engine.

The UK spec car gets uh three trim levels as well as a special edition r model, and this is really cool uh. What does the Edition R its a three tone setup? So Mazda includes, like you, said three trim levels. Um keep going with what you were talking about. Well, I lost the picture. Its all gone away now: okay, Mazda include special touches like the the maroon Rose, metallic roof, uh thats, a throwback to a roof paint Scheme on the r360s Mazdas. First production car Mazda logos, embedded in the headrest and the Edition R tags on the floor mats. There you go, you can see them the headrest good timing, there Tommy and all MX 30 TV models will get rotary badges on the fender and an e sky active rev badge on the tailgate. Now we should have more information about when, where and how youre going to mx30 in the and right now, you can only buy the EV in California. Thank you for watching and remember, go to all tfl.com. If you want to see uh the news on the new uh Teslas and how much they dropped their pricing or any other videos, Tommy just did a great actually timing. I just did a great drag race. If youre into EVS, we drag race the bolt against the leaf against the mini SE, pretty cool stuff, pretty cool stuff and thats. Also at all tfl see you guys next time see ya.