Skip to Content

Mazda to Lease Electric Vehicle

The car will have limited availability, while the automaker continues to focus on gas-powered vehicles.
January 24, 2011

Today Mazda announced that it will start leasing and electric vehicle based on its small Demio (also called the Mazda2). The car is expected to have a 124 mile range—although that’s likely based on the Japanese driving cycle, which can yield significantly different results from driving range tests in the United States and other countries. It doesn’t sound like the car will be generally available, or available outside of Japan. It “will be leased mainly to local government bodies and fleet customers.”

Like most automakers, Mazda is focusing mainly on improving the efficiency of internal combustion, and is introducing gas-powered cars that can rival the fuel economy of more expensive hybrids. Indeed, until 2009, the company did not plan to introduce electric vehicles at all. For all the fanfare surrounding electric vehicles in the last couple of months, they remain a sideshow for automakers such as GM and Ford. Nissan and Renault are putting a heavy emphasis on electric vehicles, but even these companies expect these cars to account for a small minority of sales in the next decade.

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.

Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.

Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.

This baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language

A neural network trained on the experiences of a single young child managed to learn one of the core components of language: how to match words to the objects they represent.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.