Despite the industry rapidly shifting towards electrification, Mazda’s U.S. senior vice president for operations remains unconvinced about electric vehicles.
Speaking at a seminar in Michigan, Robert Davis said there is still a lot of innovation to do and that internal combustion engines still have a pivotal role to place in the future of transportation, Automotive News reports.
“The internal combustion engine has a strong future role in transportation. We certainly considered the adoption of new technologies, batteries, EVs, plug-in hybrids and everything else. But they all share the internal combustion engine.
“So before we go into the time and effort and expense of adding electrification, we were convinced that a solid, efficient internal combustion engine was critical,” Davis said.
In recent years, Mazda has invested heavily in producing efficient petrol and diesel combustion engines with its Skyactiv and Skyactiv-D technologies.
Beyond believing in a prosperous future for combustion engines, Davis said he’s concerned about the environmental impacts of lithium-ion batteries in EVs, saying they cannot be recycled as easily as cellphone batteries.
“This is where the great thinkers of our industry need to speak up and be heard and make sure the manufacturers can do what they do best: compete against each other for the customers’ hearts and minds.
“We’re all better than this. We can do better than this. We need to consider that this is not zero emissions. This is remote emissions, or displaced emissions. We need to work on the best solution for the customers and for the environment in a common target, not an instruction manual on how to get there,” Davis said in no uncertain terms.
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