“Huge difference between Mazda CX-6e and Mazda 6e”
The role of Changan Mazda Automobile (CMA)
So how big is the difference between the Mazda 6e and the CX-6e really? Schultze: “I would say we took another half step forward. The 6e was the first joint development with our partner Changan Mazda Automobile for a car that would be sold in Europe. That was a huge learning experience for them because they had never before developed a car specifically for the European market. For us, it was also instructive, because suddenly we had to explain much more than we are used to towards Hiroshima.”
Hiroshima
Mazda has had its R&D center in Hiroshima for 35 years. Schultze: “Our colleagues there work closely with us and are here regularly. We have permanent employees in Europe, so there is a lot of mutual understanding. With a new partner, we had to build that understanding from the ground up. That required more time and effort than we expected beforehand. At the same time, we noticed that they picked this up quickly and were willing to learn.”
Further refine and improve
With the CX-6e, Mazda was able to use that knowledge gained to further refine and improve certain things, the top executive says. “For example, the electric motor is a further development of the earlier version. It offers higher efficiency and a higher continuous power level. That fits with our philosophy of making every new car better step by step.”
Finetuning
But to what extent can Mazda adapt a car for the European market? “When we develop a car together with Hiroshima, we basically already get about 98 percent of what we are looking for,” Schultze says. “Then it’s mainly about fine-tuning here and there. With CMA, we had to go much further back to basics. For example, they had never made a tuning for European radar systems before. We had to explain what the requirements are and why they are important. What we found positive in this is how quickly they responded and how willing they were to understand. But we have to convey that understanding first.”
Lessons
Will these lessons also influence future models?”Definitely. We have a strategy where, on the one hand, we cooperate with partners, for example in the field of electric vehicles, and on the other hand we develop our own electric models. On our roadmap, you can see that one of the next EVs will be based on a fully Mazda-owned platform. In addition, our understanding grows every day, thanks in part to market feedback. For example, we learned a lot from reactions to the Mazda 3, and those insights have been incorporated into our internal goals. The same is true of the lessons we are learning from the CX-6e.”
Almost everything digital
Schultze says, “The great advantage of today is that many systems are digital or electronic. That means we can make improvements even during ongoing production. In the old days, in the purely mechanical world, if a switch felt too heavy, that switch stayed that way for four years until the next model change. Those days are fortunately behind us.”