Have you heard of SKYACTIV™ TECHNOLOGY?

What is SKYACTIV™ TECHNOLOGY?

Our philosophy is that if it’s not worth driving, it’s not worth building.® So in our quest for better environmental performance, our goal was to reduce fuel consumption and emissions without compromising driving performance. To get there, we started with a clean sheet of paper and engineered every major component of the automobile to work together in efficient harmony. The result is revolutionary. You can find it in select Mazda3 models, as well as the Mazda CX-5 and the Mazda6. Soon, SKYACTIV™® TECHNOLOGY will be in every new Mazda.

Currently, 95% of the world uses gasoline or diesel combustion engines, and by 2020 90% still will. In this fact we saw an enormous opportunity: While we’re developing alternatives, let’s also make the internal combustion engine more efficient right now. That way we can work towards making a big difference in fuel consumption. Our solution is the SKYACTIV™® gasoline engine, an engineering marvel that produces more low/mid-range torque and less emissions while consuming less fuel.

Now that we had come up with such a revolutionary engine, we needed the ultimate transmission to get all that precious energy to the wheels. How do you build that? Study every modern transmission made, take the best features of each and fire up the blender. Then, top it all off by adding a brain, A.K.A. an advanced control module. The result is the SKYACTIV™®-Drive six-speed automatic transmission. It shifts smoothly for steady acceleration and quickly for the connected feel of a manual transmission, while the brain delivers precision responsiveness and reliability.

With our SKYACTIV™® Body and Chassis, we were determined to get more of that exhilarating Mazda driving feel while increasing crash safety performance and reducing weight. Through smarter engineering and materials, we were able to improve body rigidity by 30% (for better handling) and shed 220 pounds, all while improving crash safety performance. To give you more of that “oneness” between car and driver, the suspension was redesigned for greater agility at low speeds and more stability at high speeds.

Mazda’s SKYACTIV™® engines work to harness maximum energy from every drop of fuel, but what’s the point if that hard-won energy is allowed to go to waste? Yet every time you slow down much of that energy is lost. Mazda engineers came up with a solution to this problem. i-ELOOP is a groundbreaking regenerative braking system that harnesses the car’s kinetic energy and converts it into electricity. This electricity is used to power your car’s electronics—a job that used to fall to the engine. Now, every time you slow down, you charge up. The result: around approximately five percent better fuel economy, and your engine is freed up for more exciting tasks.

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