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There’s a growing alliance among three Japanese automakers: Toyota, Subaru, and Mazda. The trio have collaborated on a number of projects recently, including some EVs. But on May 28 they held a news conference to announce a bold new initiative characterized as “an engine reborn.”
Learn about the blind automotive engineer who saw more than most.
In an age where many automakers have made a full push towards complete electrification, an announcement like this has rankled some, including a number of journalism outfits. After all, they’ve decided the competition is over and battery-electric vehicles are the future, end of discussion.
That’s not how these three Japanese automakers see it. Instead, they revealed somewhat vague plans to roll out a new generation of internal combustion engines which can run on gasoline, bioethanol, or hydrogen. The EV crowd really hates the latter of those three, although they’re not too big on the other two.
To the surprise of nobody who’s been listening to and watching Toyota recently, they also announced that they believe hybrids are the future, at least in the short term They’re looking to push out a new wave of hybrid vehicles where the internal combustion engine backs up the electric motor(s) instead of the other way around. That’s been done before, so we wonder exactly what will be different with this approach.
As reported by the Associated Press, this push is supposed to help Toyota, Mazda, and Subaru reach carbon neutrality. That likely sounds insane to the Tesla crown and other EV adherents, although we wonder if they know where every watt of the electricity used to charge their batteries comes from. Or how those batteries are made.
Still, we’re skeptical about what’s coming down the pipeline from these three. It could be good, okay, or downright horrible. What we do know is Mazda yet again reiterated it’s going to use rotary engines once more, this time in hybrid powertrains. Subaru is looking to use its famous boxer engines similarly.
Things could get pretty interesting instead of everyone driving appliances in the future.
Image via Mazda
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