Surprise! Mazda's releasing another sports car later this month

Keith Tanner wrote: relying on youthful enthusiasm as an endless resource.

and so is the NCAA

I want a GT sized car from them with the 3.5l Ecoboost from the SHO

I would be very interested to see Mazda put its experiments using a small rotary as a range-extender into practice, or a rotary as the ICE in a more conventional 'hybrid' powertrain. Mazda needs to get hybrid/ev SOMETHING rolling or they are in trouble pretty soon.

To be honest, i already don't like what i see in styling other than the roofline. The taillights don't look that good although it's obviously an evolutionary homage to previous RX cars. Mazda has goofed repeatedly on styling over the last 7 years or so and the only thing they sell right now that i think looks unequivocally good is the 6. I'm not at all confident that this car will actually end up looking good, but i'm 99.5% confident it will be very interesting and have a good interior.

I think that this should have a hybrid 4-banger powerplant; I'm not so sure that they can go with all electric like the Tesla Model S or Tesla roadster, and get people to buy it. Unless the rotary is part of a hybrid system, there's no way Mazda is going to use a rotary engine again. They could call it the RX-9, but they may end up naming it something else, if they even bring it to production.

This is an RX-9:

There's a lot of FD teaser in that shot. Which I can't help but think was the intent.

Mazda said somewhere, probably their industry publication that I was reading in the waiting room, that another rotary wouldn't be profitable unless they could sell something like 100k of them. Seeing as they only sold 68.5k over 11 years of one of the best looking and handling sporting chassis ever produced, I don't see a purely rotary powered car coming to market ever again as sad as that makes me.

The rotary hybrid on the other hand is an interesting theory. There's been quite a number of articles in the past 5 years talking about the viability of a rotary range extender. A company designed a small JP-8 fueled 30 lbs rotary engine actually just won a DARPA contract recently. So it's not like the technology is dead it just needs to evolve down a different path.

If Mazda can produce a car that looks like an FD, drives like an FD, gives me lots of low down grunt, and has a large enough range to actually do some driving without serious inconvenience. I'd seriously consider buying one.

Update: Looks like this is going to be a hydrogen-powered car and NOT any kind of hybrid. That'll take care of the emissions problem (and should be good for the engine's longevity) but it will introduce a fuel sourcing problem...not sure if it makes more or less sense than a traditional rotary powertrain overall.

http://www.wired.com/2015/12/mazdas-confusing-plan-to-resurrect-the-famously-dirty-rotary-engine/

Well then... that's interesting and a long shot, even it if i speculation. If true it puts a damper on my desire to buy one as sourcing fuel will be an issue. I'd be willing to bet Toyota fits in here somewhere as they have been pushing hydrogen pretty heavily.

Now THAT makes it significantly more interesting!

Hydrogen would INCREASE my desire.

And the potential as a range extender for electric hybrid- exciting! So, you take the most boring yet efficient powerplant (electric), and combine it with the most raw and powerful-yet-compact. Add the torque of the electric to the horsepower of the rotary and the efficiency of the electric with the clenaliness of the Hydrogen- very outside the box! Sign me up! I like it.

In reply to SVreX:

It's a chicken and egg problem. I'd love to have one that ran on clean hydrogen but unless you live in some very specific places you won't be able to get it very easily. Until vehicles become more common utilizing hydrogen there won't be many filling stations.

Rotary noises with none of the emissions issues? Yes please! Now how do I fill it up after getting the free tank of gas from the dealer? Of course if I can find someone to deliver it to the house I'd be down for that. I'd hate to explain it to my homeowners insurance company though.

Mazda has been going pretty whole hog on hydrogen for the last little while.

In Tokyo there are already some retail Eneos Oil gas stations that offer super-beefy pumps with cool high pressure nozzles that you can use for your Mirai or other hydrogen car.

Probably means I can't have a manual transmission though

Hydrogen makes no sense as an automotive fuel.

In reply to T.J.:

Hey, what's wrong with a fuel that not only can diffuse through solid materials but can also react with them?

IIRC the SOP for liquid hydrogen vessels is to scrap after every use.

In reply to Knurled:

Or has a negative net energy after electrolysis is used to extract it from water? Plus yea that whole replacing the vessel thing after every use would get expensive.

Do I have to add oil to the hydrogen?

Hydrogen as the ' fuel' pretty much means this will never be a car we can buy. Not sure why that design flaw would increase the desirability.

For a group of people who are generally pretty good at thinking outside the box, y'all are pretty good at climbing into the box like a coffin and nailing it shut behind you every time the subject of hydrogen fuel comes up.

There were no gas stations when gasoline was introduced as a fuel either. IIRC, the first dedicated fuel station in the US was in 1933. That's almost 30 years after cars started commonly running on gasoline. The first car owners bought gasoline from pharmacies.

So, let's see... A manufacturer brings a product to market that needs a particular fuel, but no capitalist rises to the occasion to begin selling fuel? Yeah right.

Did you miss the part where the article said hydrogen is a by-product of Mazda's manufacturing process? THEY will be in the hydrogen business. Just like Elon Musk will be in the electric car business, AND the advanced battery business.

You are presuming hydrogen as the primary. Electric is the primary- hydrogen is a range extender. In that scenario, it makes no difference if filling stations are infrequent, or if you run out of hydrogen.