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It may be tinkering with ways to further refine the internal combustion engine, but Mazda also seems interested in playing with hybrid-electric vehicles. According to reports, the Japanese automaker may raise as much as $1.1 billion by selling stock in order to spur development of its own hybrid vehicles.
Although the company has toyed with hybrids on a few prototype vehicles, it doesn’t offer a single hybrid vehicle to the buying public, and has been slow to adopt the technology in its existing lineup. A partial sale of the company by Ford didn’t help matters. The American automaker already has hybrid powertrains in the Escape and Fusion, two vehicles that share a common platform with Mazda. Had Ford not reduced its controlling stake in Mazda from 33.3 percent to 13.8 percent last year, the relationship could have shared hybrid components.
“With the relationship weaker, there are certain things that Mazda now needs to do on its own, without Ford,” Yasuaki Iwamoto, an auto analyst at Okasan Securities, told Automotive News.
Without Ford, Mazda must develop its own hybrid systems and other ways to improve fuel economy. The company recently announced its new range of SKY engines that reportedly return a 15 percent gain in fuel economy over Mazda’s current engine range. Still, it will take something more — hybrids, perhaps — to allow the firm to achieve its goal of improving its average fuel economy by 30 percent in 2015.
Source: Automotive News
Sky engine: http://rumors.automobilemag.com/6588822/green/mazda-announces-sky-g-and-sky-d-engines-to-be-debuted-in-tokyo/index.html
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