Hasta La Gadget!

Mazda is celebrating the 25th birthday of the world’s most popular two-seat sports car. The car is the Mazda MX-5 Miata. The very first version of the Miata was introduced … Continue reading

[CEATEC 2013] All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and the folks over at Mazda have definitely realized that. Sure, they are pretty serious with their Mazda Connect system as well as Heads Up Cockpit, but there also needs to be a balance of play as well, and this comes in the form of the Shakin’ Racer smartphone app. There really isn’t that much to it other than the fact that the Shakin ‘ Racer app would make full use of the gyroscope in your mobile device to detect just how much vibration it is experiencing at the moment.

Up to 4 visitors to the Mazda booth were handed out smartphones with the app preloaded, and the “racecourse” was projected onto a large screen so that everyone is able to have a bird’s eye view of the entire situation. Once the light turned green, it signalled the moment to burn some of the proverbial rubber on the asphalt! That would involved a healthy amount of vigorous shaking using your hand, and it is a race of endurance as well as strength, so make sure you have had a breakfast for champions before giving it a go! I am quite sure that there is an optimal way to figure out just how much shaking is required to hit top speed.

Mazda Shakin’ Racer App Gives Your Arm A Workout original content from Ubergizmo.

[CEATEC 2013] As cars become “smarter”, do you think that drivers would end up dumber? Perhaps, but only time will tell. Mazda has shared more about their Mazda Connect system on the CEATEC showfloor, where it intends to bring a combination of new hardware, information and software to bring your driving experience to the next level. Not only that, Mazda Connect also offers a wide range of media to the driver and its occupants, being Japan’s first company to deliver in-vehicle internet radio as a standard feature alongside a heads-up cockpit for a safer driving experience.

(more…)

Mazda Connect Enhances The Driving Experience original content from Ubergizmo.

The Mazda6 is the epitome of the ugly duckling finding its unexpected swan. Anonymous in its first two generations, Mazda threw its Kodo design language at the third-gen version and ended up with one of the most distinctive four-doors around. Meanwhile, with the EV specter hanging over most car firms, Mazda remains a hybrid hold-out, maintaining there’s still plenty to squeeze out of existing technology before we look to batteries. Does the Mazda6 deliver? Read on for our full review.

Design

If the old Mazda6 was a generic sedan sketched out by a child’s hand, the new model is a riot of detailing. Up front, the grille has grown once more, pushing forward and deepening to give the car an aggressive, searching snout that’s picked out with slips of chrome. The almond lights of the second-gen car have become tauter, more like snake’s eyes, with daytime running lights running in crisp LED sweeps under the halogens.

That Kodo wing, as Mazda calls it, bracketing the underside of the grille and leading into the lights, begins the haunch-line of the car, which starts with muscular wheel arches at the front and then slides into a twin-creased side line that ends at the slightly tapered rear. As the first of those creases dips into the rear door, the shoulder line rises to notch away the side glass, the rear windows of which are smoked as standard on all but the entry-level cars.

Finally, there’s another chrome whisker across the trunk, with the rear light clusters deeply set into the bodywork, and an integral lip-spoiler in the lid. It looks particularly good from the front or rear three-quarters, where Mazda’s sweeping movement lines along the sides have a touch of the Infiniti or Jaguar about them. Although the effect is most impressive on the four-door, Mazda’s 5-door load-carrier, the Mazda6 Tourer manages to look distinctive too, pulling the rear side glass out to end in a crease of chrome trim, while the falling roof line and angled back glass make for a car that’s still sporty in appearance, albeit sacrificing a little internal space in the process.

Mazda fits 17-inch alloy wheels as standard, though the Sport model – as we had on test – gets 19-inch versions with twisted spokes. Similarly there are front fogs standard across the range, part of an ambitious package of no-cost perks that belie the sticker price. The daytime running lights are standard, as are the halogens and heated door mirrors; our Sport model threw in bi-Xenon headlights and power mirrors, among other things.

Engines and Performance

Four engines are on offer in the UK, split between petrol and diesel, with a choice of 6-speed manual or auto transmissions. The entry-level Mazda6 SE has a choice of 2.0l 145ps petrol or 2.2l 150ps diesel, both manual; if you want the auto box options on those you need to step up to the SE-L. At the top is the Mazda6 Sport, with a choice of four combinations: either the 2.0l 165ps manual, the 2.2l 150ps diesel manual, the 2.2l 175ps diesel manual, or the 2.2l 175ps diesel automatic.

The US, however, only gets a single engine option: a 2.5l 184HP petrol offered with either the 6-speed manual or automatic gearboxes. The manual is rated for 25mpg (US) in the city or 37mpg (US) on the highway; the auto transmission bumps both of those by a point. Only the Sport sedan is offered of the four-doors, though there’s also the Touring and the Grand Touring (the latter adding in some extras as standard); since we tested a UK car, we haven’t tried the US-specific engine.

As you might expect, the 2.0l 165ps petrol manual in the Sport version is the most instantly aggressive. Mazda quotes a 9.1s 0-62mph time and a top speed of 134mph, and though the car is among the largest in its class – 4.87m long and 1.84m wide for the four-door – there’s more high-tensile steel and other lightweight materials used inside to keep the heft down.

Mazda calls all this fettling SKYACTIV, launching it in the CX-5 SUV, and indeed the Mazda6 builds on the same MacPherson struts and multilink rear suspension, putting its power down through the front wheels. It’s not an MX-5, certainly, but neither does it wallow or slump around corners, and even in the Tourer model it’s possible to forget there are three seats and a decent scale load area behind you as you tackle corners with alacrity.

It’s the diesel engines that suit the car most, however, the 2.2l 175ps manual we spent most time with pitching its mid-range torque right into the sweet spot for overtaking at speed in fifth gear, as well as dawdling through city traffic in fourth. While diesels may traditionally lack some of the upfront verve of their gas counterparts, in actual fact the 2.2l in the Mazda6 shaves the 0-62mph dash down to just 7.9s. Even the under-tuned 150ps version does it 0.1s faster than the slightly more powerful petrol plant. In practice, of course, this is a sizable car intended for more sensible use, but it’s hard not to be impressed by the degree of enthusiasm the big Mazda can muster.

One thing you won’t find on the options sheet is a hybrid powerplant. Mazda tells us it still isn’t convinced that big batteries and electric motors are the way forward for eco-friendly cars, looking instead to engine refinement with a few tech sprinkles to keep things competitive. So, the big diesel is rated for up to 62mpg (Euro) combined – we saw a consistent 44mpg (Euro) in mixed driving from the manual version, topping out in the mid-50s on extended trips – with 119 g/km of CO2 emissions. The top-spec petrol version is more thirsty, with a quoted 47.9mpg (Euro) combined consumption and 135 g/km CO2. Opt for the smallest diesel, though, and you can trim CO2 output to an impressively meager 108 g/km.

Even though Mazda has bypassed big batteries, that’s not to say there aren’t some small ones inside the Mazda6. i-ELOOP addresses an issue most drivers probably don’t even realize is there: the cost on engine power required to drive all a car’s electronics. The audio system, HVAC, power steering and such are usually run off an alternator clamped to the engine, sapping anything up to 10-percent of its output; with i-ELOOP, the same regenerative braking principles hybrids use to convert shedding speed to battery power is turned, in the Mazda6, into a temporary source for the car’s electronics.

It’s actually a big capacitor, not a battery, but in practice it’s basically transparent to the driver (unless you cycle through to the relevant graphic in the instrument binnacle). As you decelerate, the i-ELOOP system is charged up; it can then run the electrics for around a minute, good for what Mazda claims is around a 10-percent boost in fuel economy overall. It works in hand with Mazda’s i-stop automatic engine shut-down, which temporarily cuts off the engine while you’re paused in traffic, but keeps the music playing and the climate control blowing without draining your regular battery.

Interior

Mazda’s track record in making sports car interiors puts the driver in the right place in the Mazda6, particularly in the leather-clad environs of the Sport model (SE and SE-L make do with cloth seats as standard), though it’s not the most imaginative dashboard we’ve sat behind. The sat-nav touchscreen sits on top of the HVAC controls, the stack broken up with a swathe line – thankfully not fake wood – studded with vents, and all the controls feel sturdy and resilient, but there’s not much in the way of excitement or superlative-design to be found.

The murky, underwhelming clock and HVAC display of the CX-5 has been spruced up some for the Mazda6, and we can’t argue with the tactile knobs and buttons. Similarly, the wheel is nicely sized (and leather-wrapped across the range) with Mazda sensibly deciding not to follow rivals and scattershot it with buttons and shortcuts. Instead, you get cruise control on the right and A/V on the left, along with a voice-command button we’ll cover in the next section.

There are plenty of storage nooks, including a deep center armrest up front and sizable door pockets, while in the back there’s room for three adults. Despite the sweeping roofline there’s plenty of headroom, too, the seats being slung low enough to accommodate those six feet tall in comfort. The stylishly rising waistline – along with the tinted windows of the Sport variant – can make things a little difficult to see out of for younger passengers, however. Still, the contoured seats do a good job of holding people in place, even if the driver is getting a little carried away with the SKYACTIV handling, and though firm with the Sports suspension, the ride front and back is not uncomfortable even on longer road-trips.

Those trips can be accompanied by a reasonable amount of luggage, too, thanks to a capacious rear. Seats up – they split 60/40, and can only be dropped down from inside the trunk for security reasons – there are 483l to play with, versus 506l in the Tourer (which expands to 1,632l when both the Tourer’s seats are down). The opening itself is wide and relatively low, though can conveniently be opened from the key.

Technology

Mazda is keen to position itself as a tech-first company, and so the Mazda6 comes with most of the options boxes ticked, particularly if you specify the SE-L or Sport variants. Across the range you get cruise control; electric windows all round; a 5.8-inch color touchscreen atop a radio/single-slot CD player; Bluetooth for hands-free and streaming; both an aux-in and USB input for audio, hidden in the central armrest; and air-conditioning.

Our Sport tester, however, cranks that up even further, with dual-zone climate control and keyless entry; parking sensors front and rear, along with a reversing camera; rain-sensing wipers and an auto-dimming rear mirror; power adjustment and three-stage heating for the front seats (with two memory positions for the driver’s side); and a Bose surround sound audio system with a total of eleven speakers and dynamic noise compensation using a microphone hidden in the cabin.

That’s a fair amount of gadgetry, and there are a few different ways to control it, some it has to be said better than others. As well as the touchscreen sat on top of the dashboard – which has a few knobs and buttons around it, for jumping into navigation, audio, and phone, and controlling volume and tuning, there’s a multifunction dial next to the parking brake which along with rotating can be pushed in four directions and pressed in to select. That’s surrounded by another cluster of shortcut buttons – again, for audio, phone, navigation, and setup, as well as two back-keys – in the hope that you’ll not reach out and tap at the touchscreen when driving.

Mazda6 Technology Review:

For the basics, like adjusting volume or whipping through radio channels, the dial works well, but things get a little more complex if you try to do everything with it. What would normally require you to simply stab at the screen to change or select can demand some adroit maneuvering with the dial, to make sure you’re first highlighting the right section and only then scrolling through it.

It’s worth taking the time to get familiar with it, though, as there’s plenty you can do with the Mazda’s standard-fit entertainment system. The radio supports the usual presets and digital tuning, but we spent most time using Bluetooth to stream from our smartphone: both local tracks and streaming services like Spotify worked perfectly, and we were able to control playback using the Mazda6′s steering wheel mounted controls along with see artist, track, and album information on the display, together with phone battery status.

USB and aux-in playback works much in the same way, and there’s a thoughtful notch cut out for you to snake a cable out of the center armrest so you can use the device while still having somewhere to rest your elbow. Up to seven Bluetooth device pairings can be stored, with multipoint for having more than one active simultaneously, and the Mazda6 automatically resumes Spotify playback when you bring your phone back into the car, and pauses/resumes either side of a call.

The Bose speaker system holds up to scrutiny too, filling the car with loud, clear audio that sounds fantastic. Bose includes its optional center-point audio processing, which adjusts the various speaker settings to remove some of the directionality of the music and make it sound harmonious no matter where you’re speaking (rather than, say, louder from whichever speaker you’re closest to). It’s better suited to some musical types than others, we have to say; classical and pop benefited, with a more even quality to the audio, but rap and R’n’B lost some of their punchiness. Luckily it’s easy to switch on and off in the settings.

In the phone page, you can optionally download your phonebook to the car’s internal storage, for easier dialing of contacts, and set a number of speed dial favorites. However, the Mazda6 can also suck out your phone’s text messages, reading them out to you so that you needn’t take your hands of the wheel or your eyes off the road. We had no problems being heard on calls, even competing with 70mph road noise.

Unfortunately, the same speech clarity can’t be said for the voice control system. For the basics, hitting the button on the steering wheel and asking for a phone number works as you’d expect, but when you factor in the optional TomTom-powered navigation system, it becomes more frustrating. In theory, drivers should be able to say an address and have a list of search results shown on-screen, from which they can select by calling out the list number of the right option. In practice, most of the time we struggled to get the system to recognize the address we intended and, coupled with the lengthy pauses before search results were returned, we generally resorted to manually searching using the on-screen keyboard.

It’s a shame, because the TomTom system itself works well. If you’re familiar with one of the company’s standalone PNDs then the interface in the Mazda6 should present few surprises, with comprehensive mapping data, live traffic updates, automatic re-routing based on hold-ups further along your journey, and a huge database of points-of-interest. A range of voices and on-screen icons are available for guidance, with instructions cutting into music playback as the track temporarily fades in volume.

Pricing

In the UK, the Mazda6 kicks off at £19,595 for the SE saloon with the 2.0l petrol engine, or £21,795 for the 2.2l diesel. The cheapest Tourer is the £22,545 SE 2.2l diesel. The 2.2l diesel Sport saloon we spent most time with begins at £25,495; you’ll pay a £1,200 premium for the auto gearbox.

As for the US version, the Sport sedan begins at $20,880 (pre-destination charges and other fees), while the Touring is from $24,495. The Grand Touring – which makes the Bose audio system, TomTom navigation, keyless entry, and other features usually part of the Touring “Technology Package” standard – begins at $29,495.

That makes the Mazda6 a little more expensive out of the gate than, say, a Ford Mondeo, but it also comes with a higher degree of standard specifications.

Wrap-Up

The old Mazda6 was, not to put too fine a point on it, forgettable. Seats and an engine in a box on some wheels. That the new Mazda6 surges off the forecourt with such eye-catching styling and on-road polish makes it a huge advance, and it’s one that in most areas punches above its price.

Curvaceous, swooping design makes the car distinctive and handsome, a welcome diversion from the Germanic crispness that seems to have proliferated among Volkswagen, GM, Ford and others. Only the somewhat frustrating usability of the in-cabin tech and the slightly less-than-gaping luggage opening (unless you opt for the Tourer) mar the experience. Meanwhile the driving experience is enough to make you forget you’re in a not-insubstantial four-door; we’d opt for the diesel engine and manual gearbox, if given the choice, which pairs decent economy with solid performance to match the capable chassis.

Mazda6 Review is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Optimus Prime, Hot Rod, and Ultra Magnus. These are all robot cars from the Transformers franchise rooted in early 1980s Japan. Somewhat disappointingly, here in realityland it looks like Japan’s real robot cars will have names like Nissan, Toyota, Fuji Heavy Industries, Honda, Mazda, and Hitachi.

Assume gravelly cowboy voice:
“Hitachibots, transform and roll out!”
Yeeaaah… umm, nope.

Okay, sadly Japan’s big automakers aren’t yet churning out sentient, anthropomorphized, purely good or purely evil all-male robot warriors. But they are very hip to developing and deploying practical versions of so-called robot cars in cooperation with domestic government agencies (Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism – MLIT), one another, and given their global reach, international partners as well. Domestically, the current aim is to deploy highly autonomous, self-driving cars on freeways within 9-10 years. If the system proves successful, a global brand like Nissan or Toyota would surely find additional markets in other, much larger national freeway systems (ex: the massive national networks of China and the United States).

Concepts and proposals for robotic automobiles have been around for almost 80 years, and functional experimentation has been ongoing since the early 1980s. Actually, when breaking it down by individual features, 0ne can see that cars have been gradually roboticizing for a long time, e.g., power steering, power windows, power mirrors, anti-lock brakes, etc., etc.

So naturally, big J-Auto’s development of self-driving, partially autonomous, and arguably robotic feature sets isn’t novel. The 2003 Toyota Prius (Japan only), for example, was the first car available with a sonar-based Intelligent Parking Assist System (IPAS) wherein the driver operates the brake and the car calculates optimal steering angles for automated parallel parking (this option didn’t make it to the U.S. until 2009). Robotic features aren’t limited to driving, as here with the 2006 Mazda Miata’s Transformer-like power sunroof:

So what else is there with the Japan/robot car special connection situation? Well, geography, as it is so often want to do, must also insert itself into this macro-cultural equation. Insofar as: Japan’s approximately 130 million residents are shoehorned onto a mere 30% of the country’s land area – and not by choice, the other 70% is either too unstable, rugged, or topographically crazy to be inhabited. So, if one imagines all those people in contiguous urbanization on an island nation about the size of the U.S. state of Ohio, or just a bit larger than Portugal, one can appreciate the extreme population density and everyday challenge of very close-quarter driving and parking.

Another big deal for robotic cars here is the very long-term continuous habitation of the habitable areas. See, when one gets off the modern, 1st world-standard, highly developed roadways, in most cases one will quickly find oneself winding through very narrow streets with little if any standardized configuration. Human beings have been living along the same trails-that-became-roads-that-became-streets for many hundreds, if not thousands of years – long before there was much regard for large-scale municipal planning or an even vague anticipation of the motor vehicle. The analog compensation here is that nearly every non-arterial, non-grid-like intersection in Japan has an array of fish-eye mirrors at each corner, and drivers either use them or risk having no idea what’s coming. A networked robotic car, however, would be able to “see” around the corners, which would be nice when navigating this Tokyo neighborhood:

And then there’s the demographics. We mentioned assistive robots’ role in Japan’s aging society a few weeks back; this country has a big-deal labor shortage coming up in a generation and a half or so. In addition to the role robotics will very likely play in augmenting a dwindling human services labor force, a day spent in any Japanese city futilely looking for taxi or bus driver under 45 will clearly reveal another pending labor shortage. Who’s going to fill those jobs in 25 years? Yep.

Japan is approaching a perfect-storm state of necessity for practical robots, and if proven effective, reliable, and safe, increasingly robotic automobiles are likely to get an early foothold here. Besides, piloting a car in Japan is objectively difficult, licensing and compulsory driving schools are quite expensive, and despite its world-class public transportation system, Japan does experience considerable roadway congestion (networked, self-driving cars are anticipated to greatly reduce traffic jams and the effects of human error). Add in safety benefits, a potentially positive environmental impact, and POW: if it can, big J-Auto will put J-robots on the road ASAP.

Japan’s current repertoire doesn’t include anything ready for public consumption, but there are some very advanced and promising projects underway. Nissan’s modified Leaf, introduced last October as the NSC-2015, as in the year 2015, is an ambitious and innovative offering – complete with smartphone connectivity:

Toyota is also keeping pace with the Lexus-branded Advanced Active Safety Research Vehicle that debuted at CES in January:

Bringing things down to the personal, Hitachi recently unveiled their latest version of the Robot for Personal Intelligent Transport System – Ropits. This autonomous, obstacle-avoiding, user-friendly personal transport is intended to one day assist the elderly or disabled:

Japan’s MLIT was scheduled to produce an update to their ongoing robo-car feasibility studies by the end of last month. While not yet public, it’s safe to assume that their assessments and directives probably won’t result in big J-Auto’s production of a transforming robot car that will protect you, your family, and the galaxy from those other, eeeevil robots – but within a few decades, it’ll probably be reasonable to expect one’s very own private chauffeur to be… well, basically just software.

For now and the near future, think of robotic cars as you might think of powered robotic exoskeletons, i.e., they’ll help you do what you need to do with greater strength, precision, and efficiency, but they aren’t going to walk out to the driveway and help you up the stairs all by themselves.

The robots are coming, but for now and a while to come, humans are still going to have to push a few buttons.
_________

Reno J. Tibke is the founder and operator of Anthrobotic.com and a contributor at the non-profit Robohub.org.