- Mazda will build a battery factory in Japan in partnership with Panasonic Energy.
- The new plant will supply battery packs for Mazda’s first ground-up electric vehicles
- The new Mazda EV debuts in 2027, promising “advanced design, superior convenience, and extended driving ranges.”
Mazda plans to launch a new line of bespoke, in-house-developed electric vehicles, and the first will arrive in 2027. The batteries that will power its new EVs will come from a factory currently that will be built in the Yamaguchi Prefecture in Japan, with Panasonic as a technology partner and supplier.
The new factory’s planned annual production capacity is 10 GWh, and it will exclusively supply Mazda’s new EVs. The facility will likely also serve a research purpose for Mazda, which will try to improve lithium-ion battery technology and eventually transition to solid-state batteries. The battery packs produced here will feature cylindrical cells from Panasonic Energy.
We don’t know much about Mazda’s upcoming EVs, but the first will be a crossover/SUV. When Mazda revealed its outline for future model launches, it listed the high-riding BEV as coming in 2027 with a plug-in hybrid derivative being considered for launch after 2028.
Mazda also has plans to launch a second fully electric model as part of its partnership with China’s Changan Automobile. The joint venture has produced the Mazda EZ-6 electric sedan, available as a pure BEV or range extender. The EZ-6 is a rebadged and reworked version of the Deepal L07, a China-made midsize sedan that Changan developed with Huawei and CATL.
Changan also sells a crossover version of the L07 called the S07, which will likely serve as the basis for another Mazda electric SUV (previewed by the Arata concept) set to launch at the end of 2025. Both of the Changan-based Mazda models will also be sold outside of China—the EZ-6 sedan was confirmed for Europe in August 2024, and a camouflaged prototype was spotted in Sweden in November last year.
We are excited to see what Mazda’s bespoke EVs will be like, even though its first proper EV, the MX-30, was a sales flop even after introducing a unique range-extender setup that used a rotary engine as its generator. However, the MX-30 was still based around a combustion vehicle platform, so it wasn’t a ground-up EV—it was even available as a pure combustion vehicle in some markets.
All Mazda officials have said is that these new electric models will have “advanced design, superior convenience, and extended driving ranges.” Mazda says the “Joy of Driving” will be a core principle of these new EVs, which is great news because some of its recent models (the MX-30 in particular) weren’t that great to drive.
A large part of Mazda’s identity comes from the sportiness with which it imbues its cars, so it needs to be present in its EVs if it is to stand a chance of wooing buyers away from buying something Chinese or Korean.
