Would you buy an electrified Miata?

I'd be tempted, but I'm not sure I'd put down money sight unseen like I did with the ND. But you never know.

Many in this thread are misinterpreting. Electrified =/= EV. Like Keith said, Mazda has already confirmed the next gen Miata will be "electrified" in some way, likely a mild hybrid with very little electric-only range, if any.

Yes, I would buy an "electrified" Miata if it still had the Miata soul. But I chose to buy a new ND here in the present because I am betting it will be the last of its kind: high-revving, gas-powered, manual transmission, RWD, and truly lightweight. I may not be able to buy this kind of car ever again, so smoke 'em if you got 'em. 

I find it weird that very few tracks or autocross parking lots are equipped for electric cars, so they are just going to have gas generators plugging along on gas to charge them. If I was someone with political clout, I would have pushed synthetic or alternative fuels that can easily be adapted to old and new cars and can be pumped at a gas station. 

edizzle89 said:

frenchyd said:

californiamilleghia said:

I  would pick a Hybrid plug in Miata  over a pure ICE Miata , 

 But now many miles will it run on EV power ?  I would like them to go 50-75 miles on EV only,  which would be an average day running around town . 
It's going to happen ,  it's just how Mazda sees the future !

I can understand.  You like carrying  around the extra  weight of a spare power system.      You like driving to the gas station and getting gas splashed back on your clothes when it overflows.  You don't mind grabbing that nozzle that 100,000 people have grabbed before you. To be fair I suspect I only rarely caught a cold or anything from a gas pump handle. 

what kind of reverse-boomer mindset is this? a plug in hybrid is basically just having a gas powered range extender in your car, which isn't the worst thing. Also in almost 2 decades of fueling my cars I've had gas get splashed back on my clothes exactly zero times. As for the # of times a gas pump handle has been grabbed, welcome to every door and handrail and bathroom toilet/sink handle ever, I chalk it up to being good for my immune system.

 

With today's electric infrastructure I'd be more likely to look into a plug in hybrid over full EV as we do a lot of long driving vacations and even with charging stations becoming more prevalent I still don't want to have to fully plan every route I take on were those charging stations are, I'd use them when I'd be able to but can still find gas anywhere I decide to go. 

A back up power system. OK. Clearly you don't trust electricity.  That's fair enough.  You've used gas or diesel all your life.  Change is difficult.  There are all the unknowns.

I'm buying a Cheap EV  for local use.  
    And whenever I want/ need a longer range I'll use my ICE 
    I've never found a real good dual purpose car.   It may be good at one thing.  But not both. 

    

trigun7469 said:

I find it weird that very few tracks or autocross parking lots are equipped for electric cars, so they are just going to have gas generators plugging along on gas to charge them. If I was someone with political clout, I would have pushed synthetic or alternative fuels that can easily be adapted to old and new cars and can be pumped at a gas station. 

Tracks are installing chargers, and you can get through an autox without the need to charge - we've got a couple of EVs that show up to our local short track time trial and autox events.

I'm thinking there are three levels of electrification all mixed up here.

- mild hybrid. Think "electric supercharger", the car's got a relatively small battery that is recharged with regen or by the ICE, and it supplements the ICE by providing a shot of power when needed. While it can technically run on pure battery power, it's not really intended to. See Porsche 918, for example. Or all the hybrids running in F1 and WEC. Or the original Prius.

- PHEV, aka plug-in hybrid electric. This is the DVD/VCR combo, a car that tries to be electric when it can but carries a spare drivetrain - depending on the relative sizes of the two powertrains. See Chevy Volt. I can't see this being a great fit to the Miata. It's good if your target is high efficiency without making the full jump, or if you want to be able to drive your hypercar through downtown London on battery power.

- BEV, aka full electric. This may be the end game for the car. It'll be heavier than currently, but my back of the envelope calculations a while back came up with 2800 lbs, 250 hp and about 200 miles of range using an ND as a base - and using off-the-shelf junkyard power units. That 2800 is heavy for a Miata, but our LS3-powered NC PRHT clocked in at just over that and it's basically S2000 levels of mass. It would be low and central, so the combo of the low C0G and a low polar moment along with the very sharp throttle response could make it a much better performer than the specs would suggest. That's not gonna happen for the next generation Miata, though. Mazda's not ready regardless of what their market might be interested in buying.

jharry3 said:

The $7500 rebate out of our tax dollars given to EV buyers is only the first of a list of reasons for me to to stay away from EV's.   

I don't think we should be enabling this social engineering with tax dollars.   

Let the market decide what to buy at the full price it costs to sell with a profit.   If EV's can complete then great.  Make a million EV's.

Don't the manufacturers also get some kind of tax or carbon credits for building EV's?  Even more tax dollars redistributed from many to a few. 

Hopefully I didn't cross the political line here but those are my thoughts.

Cool, I can get on board with this.  If we also rescind all the subsidies to fossil fuel companies, which more than triple the EV tax credits and are permanent rather than temporary.  If we want a level field, let's have a level field.

To the original question- if they turn out to by hybrids as Keith describes, then I would love to own one.

They can count me out, no interest in an all electric Miata. I drive for fun now as I don't have a daily commute, enjoy ICE engine sounds and don't really care that an electric car may be faster, just not interested. I suspect that I am not in the minority. This lemming like rush to electric cars is not logical as we don't have the electric infrastructure in place to support it. I am fine with fuel efficiency standards, emission standards, etc, but to mandate the technology used to achieve it (all electric) just does not make sense. What happened to fuel cells, e-gasoline and other tech or does only the politicians know the best solutions?

frenchyd said:

edizzle89 said:

frenchyd said:

californiamilleghia said:

I  would pick a Hybrid plug in Miata  over a pure ICE Miata , 

 But now many miles will it run on EV power ?  I would like them to go 50-75 miles on EV only,  which would be an average day running around town . 
It's going to happen ,  it's just how Mazda sees the future !

I can understand.  You like carrying  around the extra  weight of a spare power system.      You like driving to the gas station and getting gas splashed back on your clothes when it overflows.  You don't mind grabbing that nozzle that 100,000 people have grabbed before you. To be fair I suspect I only rarely caught a cold or anything from a gas pump handle. 

what kind of reverse-boomer mindset is this? a plug in hybrid is basically just having a gas powered range extender in your car, which isn't the worst thing. Also in almost 2 decades of fueling my cars I've had gas get splashed back on my clothes exactly zero times. As for the # of times a gas pump handle has been grabbed, welcome to every door and handrail and bathroom toilet/sink handle ever, I chalk it up to being good for my immune system.

 

With today's electric infrastructure I'd be more likely to look into a plug in hybrid over full EV as we do a lot of long driving vacations and even with charging stations becoming more prevalent I still don't want to have to fully plan every route I take on were those charging stations are, I'd use them when I'd be able to but can still find gas anywhere I decide to go. 

A back up power system. OK. Clearly you don't trust electricity.  That's fair enough.  You've used gas or diesel all your life.  Change is difficult.  There are all the unknowns.

I'm buying a Cheap EV  for local use.  
    And whenever I want/ need a longer range I'll use my ICE 
    I've never found a real good dual purpose car.   It may be good at one thing.  But not both. 

    

I trust electricity just fine, it's the current ability to be able to charge that electricity that I don't trust yet. For local use it's great, I'm all for it, but having to dictate the route of a long trip on charging station locations isn't something I'd want to have to be concerned with.

I also like your mindset of talking down to a plug-in hybrid as 'carrying the extra weight of a spare power system' and 'not trusting electricity' but then you go on to say how you'll have an entire other ICE vehicle for long trips, almost like a spare power system because you don't trust the EV to make those long trips easily... It's literally a dual purpose vehicle for you're exact reasons, it can do both things you are 'needing' 2 cars to do, but to each their own

 It wasn't a politician that started this.   GM built the EV1   And when it failed to meet their goals. They crushed all of them.   
  Then  Elon Musk saw a real opportunity and got involved with Tesla. Long before there was any real  move to EV's. 
   Well you know that story.   If you don't it's a great read.  
 But now it's about money.    Look up the stock value of Tesla and compare it to Chevy and Ford etc.  

VW, BMW, Etc all are looking at  EV's because that's what people want.  To me they are cheaper than a ICE. Tesla doesn't spend a dime advertising. Everybody else spends billions.  
     If you read about the advances in manufacturing Tesla has come up with you'll understand where the value is.  
    Your car won't fix itself but a Tesla will. Your car won't improve itself but a Tesla will.   
 

Elon Musk would rather improve his cars then spend money advertising them.   
   I like that even if I don't like his politics. 
  PS I'm as serious a gear head as there is. Racing a V12  is my idea of fun.   
     

dherr (Forum Supporter) said:

They can count me out, no interest in an all electric Miata. I drive for fun now as I don't have a daily commute, enjoy ICE engine sounds and don't really care that an electric car may be faster, just not interested. I suspect that I am not in the minority. This lemming like rush to electric cars is not logical as we don't have the electric infrastructure in place to support it. I am fine with fuel efficiency standards, emission standards, etc, but to mandate the technology used to achieve it (all electric) just does not make sense. What happened to fuel cells, e-gasoline and other tech or does only the politicians know the best solutions?

If you're worried about the ability to charge - we do have the electric infrastructure in place far more than you think, and it's growing on pace with the change of the national fleet - you will not like what you see when you start looking into fuel cells. There is no hydrogen infrastructure to speak of. 

Many of the mandates are not for electric per se, but zero emissions. If you can do that with a fuel cell vehicle, go for it. Heck, do it with compressed air if you'd like. It just turns out that if you want zero emissions, the best solution is battery electric so people often consider them the same thing.

But that's not really the subject at hand here. Can electrification of some sort make the Miata better? I think it can. I think it could make it worse if poorly implemented as well. But I think Mazda has a pretty good handle on this "sports car" thing overall so I have more hope of them getting it right than some Chinese company that bought the MG name.

In reply to edizzle89 :

The reason I'll keep my paid for Ford F150 is to tow the boat, tow the race car , haul stuff home.  And Yes long trips.   I drive non stop for 20 + hours at a crack.     
   The reason for an EV is it's cheap to run.  They also tend to be brisk and corner well because of their low center of gravity. 

I think that sound and shifting your own gears are important parts of the 2 seat sports car experience. If the electrified Miata still has those components then I'd be on board.

If the goal is to commute cheaply, then hybrids or BEVs are great. If the goal is to set the fastest quarter mile or lap times, then they're great too (at least for awhile). But if the goal is to appeal to your emotional side and form a connection that sparks joy and makes you want to just go for a drive down a windy road, that's where EVs seem like a bit of a let down. Nobody buys a 2 seat sports car solely to commute, or tow things, or take the family on long trips. It's a toy that's meant to put a smile on your face. The communication that comes with well tuned steering, and a crisp manual shifter that allows you to interact and engage with the powertrain with multiple senses at the same time is critical.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Summit Point halts use of EVs and hybrids 

Still seems like alt fuels are simpler. It seems like most of the fully BEV and PHEV are new it will be interesting when these age if the tech holds up. Karting is looking in the fully electric, which would require some sort of charging in addition to having heavy 3-4 batteries, wouldn't look forward to picking it up and putting it on the kart stand, but this technology is going to trickle down.

In reply to STM317 :

I agree involvement will be important, it's just that less of that will come from noises or from mastering something that technology can do better or which has become completely irrelevant, such as a manual transmission. There's no reason the steering on an electrified vehicle can't be as good as one with an ICE - we've already moved to EPAS on almost every vehicle so that's now divorced from the drivetrain. Handling and feedback can be just as good.

It may come down to if you define the driving experience as mastering control of a machine, or letting the machine get out of the way and just enjoying the flow of the road/track. Both of those are valid, but they're a little bit at cross purposes so "improving" one will often come at the cost of the other.

No.

I have no interest in an all-electric vehicle. I like that my foot (or wrist) induces explosions to propel me forward, I like the noises that come out of the back, I love the connection of operating a vehicle rather than making suggestions to a sterile computer. I also like that if people do want a dead simple 1-pedal appliance that gets them through the rat race then they can go get one. I also don't feel at all bad about my miniscule emissions when industry exists. 

In reply to trigun7469 :

Yes, I am very aware of the Summit point discussion. But Summit Point is not every track. Others - Laguna Seca and Buttonwillow, for example - are installing chargers. And Summit Point will likely change their rules in the future.

Alt fuels are very familiar, so gearheads think that's a way to go. Not really a solution if your goal is low emissions or even low cost, although E85 does smell nice :) Liquid fuel is going to be the choice for endurance racing for a very long time.

In reply to Error404 :

If you think you're not just making suggestions to a computer now, you don't want to drive a modern gas car :) You make requests, the computer decides what to do to meet your requests - or maybe not. The accelerator pedal is now a torque request device and does not directly influence the engine at all. Not saying you shouldn't enjoy it, but you probably don't have quite the purity of experience you think you do...

No. 

But I wouldn't buy a gas one either so it's kind of a moot point. 

I'm still wondering what EV frenchyd drives. He sure does preach the EV line but never has shared which one he drives. I've even asked him directly several times without an answer. I wonder why that is. I'm starting to think he's being a bit hypocritical and not practicing what he preaches. 

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Shhh I'm trying to maintain my little fantasy world darnit.  More accurate to say that the impact and influence of the technology is downplayed and I appreciate it. Tech more as a tool and less as a feature. Less of an anti-tech stance and more of a personal excitement thing. I like buttons, switches, knobs, and not really growing up. 

In reply to Error404 :

OK, we'll keep it our little secret ;)

STM317 said:

I think that sound and shifting your own gears are important parts of the 2 seat sports car experience. If the electrified Miata still has those components then I'd be on board.

If the goal is to commute cheaply, then hybrids or BEVs are great. If the goal is to set the fastest quarter mile or lap times, then they're great too (at least for awhile). But if the goal is to appeal to your emotional side and form a connection that sparks joy and makes you want to just go for a drive down a windy road, that's where EVs seem like a bit of a let down. Nobody buys a 2 seat sports car solely to commute, or tow things, or take the family on long trips. It's a toy that's meant to put a smile on your face. The communication that comes with well tuned steering, and a crisp manual shifter that allows you to interact and engage with the powertrain with multiple senses at the same time is critical.

I'm about as serious a gear head as there is.   I build V12 race cars and love working on my MG TD.   
   But they are toys.    
     Transportation?   I want cheap!!!!!  
              So I have money to play with my toys.  

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Sometimes California can be it's own continent, and most tracks are having trouble making necessary improvements let alone installing chargers. When electric starts showing up circle track, I think that is when the gas becomes extinct. I guess we can watch what the politicians invest in and see what really happens in the future of electric. 

ShinnyGroove (Forum Supporter) said:

jharry3 said:

The $7500 rebate out of our tax dollars given to EV buyers is only the first of a list of reasons for me to to stay away from EV's.   

I don't think we should be enabling this social engineering with tax dollars.   

Let the market decide what to buy at the full price it costs to sell with a profit.   If EV's can complete then great.  Make a million EV's.

Don't the manufacturers also get some kind of tax or carbon credits for building EV's?  Even more tax dollars redistributed from many to a few. 

Hopefully I didn't cross the political line here but those are my thoughts.

Cool, I can get on board with this.  If we also rescind all the subsidies to fossil fuel companies, which more than triple the EV tax credits and are permanent rather than temporary.  If we want a level field, let's have a level field.

To the original question- if they turn out to by hybrids as Keith describes, then I would love to own one.

I'm with you on that.  Corporate Welfare needs to be cut everywhere.  We are speeding towards Corporatism de facto.

In reply to frenchyd :

REMs aren't a barrier it's just overly costly and consumes a lot of diesel which keeps costs high.  It's an efficiency issue, as in cost per output.