Mazda confirms rotary extender plan for 2013

The Mazda rotary looked like it could be dead after the RX-8, which ended production earlier this year.

But with Mazda repeatedly saying that while its role in driving wheels was gone, it was not forgotten in their future plans.

Yamanouchi said Mazda plans to launch an electric car with a rotary range-extender, possibly in 2013. In this incarnation - and similarly to a recent Audi A1 e-tron concept - a tiny rotary will be used to keep charge up to the battery pack, which powers electric motors driving the wheels.

The Audi concept’s 250cc rotary fitted on an A4 sheet of paper, and took advantage of the technology’s optimum efficiency when kept at a constant rpm level. However Audi has no production plan at the moment for the car, which would make Mazda first to market with a rotary hybrid.

“The rotary has very good dynamic performance, but if you accelerate and brake a lot there are efficiency disadvantages,” Yamanouchi is cited as saying to Autocar. “The range extender overcomes that. We can keep it spinning at its most efficient 2,000 rpm while also taking advantage of its (compact) size.”

There’s no word yet on which car might be the first to get the rotary range-extended treatment. But the compactness of such a system lends itself to the smaller end of the spectrum - Mazda2 and Mazda3 -- where the large battery packs of full electric vehicles are not viable in terms of space and weight penalties.