The date of the premiere of the crossover Mazda with a rotary engine MX-30, equipped with a Wankel engine, will be shown early next year

Mazda will bring to the Brussels Motor Show a hybrid version of the MX-30 crossover with a rotary engine. The single-section unit will work as an onboard generator and recharge the traction battery, while the electric motor will continue to spin the wheels. This solution will significantly increase the range – this figure for the current MX-30 is 200 kilometers.

The Mazda MX-30 crossover with a single-section rotary piston engine will debut at the Brussels Motor Show early next year. The Wankel motor here will work as an onboard generator to charge the traction battery. This will significantly increase the power reserve, which now is only 200 kilometers. The technology was announced back in 2020 specifically for the MX-30.

But the company started using the Wankel engine as a generator much earlier. For example, in 2007 Mazda showed the second version of the Premacy Hydrogen RE Hybrid minivan. In it, a dual-fuel RPD (gasoline / hydrogen) generated current for the battery, and the wheels were driven by an electric motor. A similar scheme was used on the Mazda2 RE prototype in 2013. Based on the Demio EV, the hybrid received a 38-horsepower 0.33-liter engine and could travel twice as much as the original (380 km versus 200).

But rotary piston engines are unlikely to appear as the main ones on Mazda. The last Renesis engine for the Mazda RX-8 coupe was released on June 22, 2012, and the Renesis II (aka 16X) lit up once on the Mazda Taiki concept 15 years ago. The unit received an aluminum body, direct injection and a number of other improvements and was supposed to develop about 300 horsepower.