米azda's New Lightweight Mild-Hybrid Tech Could Save The Miata

The米azda MX-5 Miatais the darling of the automotive world. It's horribly impractical, slow, and small, but these drawbacks are part of the reason people love it. Its size and impracticality make it easy to place and free you of unnecessary and heavy features, while its lack of power means more time working your way up and down the rev range, having fun. Thankfully, it seems that it will bekeeping its distance from full electrification, likely usingSkyactiv-X technologyto keep it clean. However, that doesn't mean that it won't be hybridized, and a new patent suggests that Mazda is doing its best to ensure that the addition of mild electrification won't severely impact handling.

In the documentation filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in March 2019 and published in December of last year, Mazda envisions a relatively small battery pack as it sees large battery packs and full-scale electrification as "a vicious cycle" of adding more power to cope with more weight, which then requires bigger batteries thus adding to the weight issue again. So instead of a large battery, Mazda's patent details a bank of capacitors (these seem to be critical to Mazda's future EV plans), and two in-wheel electric motors of 17 kilowatts each. A 25-kW electric motor on the transmission is also shown. The 3.5-kWh battery pack would be mounted somewhere in the middle of the car, and the front-mounted engine would send power to the rear wheels while the fronts would be powered by those electric motors, thus indicating all-wheel drive.