Sustainable Zoom-Zoom
What is SKYACTIV TECHNOLOGY?
Providing outstanding driving pleasure as well as top environmental and safety performance, with incredible fuel economy up to 40 MPG.
SKYACTIV
TECHNOLOGY is a blanket term for Mazda's innovative new-generation
technologies that are being developed under the company's long-term
vision for technology development, Sustainable Zoom-Zoom. The SKYACTIV
TECHNOLOGY name is intended to reflect Mazda's desire to provide driving
pleasure as well as outstanding environmental and safety performance in
its vehicles. To achieve this goal, Mazda has implemented an internal
Building Block Strategy to be completed by 2015. This ambitious strategy
involves the comprehensive optimization of Mazda's base technologies,
which determine the core performance of its vehicles, and the
progressive introduction of electric devices such as regenerative
braking and a hybrid system. All the technologies that are developed
based on the Building Block Strategy will fall under the SKYACTIV
TECHNOLOGY umbrella.
The
development of automotive mechanisms for engines has a history going
back more than 120 years and has involved the work of countless
engineers. For this reason we tend to find it difficult to think that
any further improvement in performance is possible. But the fact remains
that 70 to 80 percent of the energy contained in fuel is lost within a
vehicle's powertrain and fails to be transferred as motive power to its
wheels.
Many
of today's automakers are working on engine refinement by making
engines smaller and various other methods. One of Mazda's recent
developments towards an ideal engine configuration is the Homogenous
Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) engine, which offers the combined
advantages of both gasoline and diesel engines. In commercializing the
rotary engine and through other remarkable technical achievements, Mazda
has a history of making the seemingly impossible possible. Now, we have
taken on the challenge of pursuing ideal combustion.
Highly efficient transmissions developed in pursuit of the ideal transmission
Vehicle
transmissions are not only extremely important for improving fuel
economy, they also exert a major influence on driving performance. The
performance demands on automatic transmissions vary greatly depending on
the market, and since there is not a single transmission in existence
that satisfies all these varied demands, automakers deploy a variety of
systems, each matched to a particular market. Employing the world's most
commonly-used combination - a torque converter and stepped automatic
transmission - as the basic structure, and by using technology that
substantially reduces slip in starting devices, Mazda has brought
together the benefits of each system and developed a highly efficient
automatic transmission with a substantially direct drive feel that will
be perfectly suited to conditions in numerous global markets.
Mazda
has always put the highest priority on offering driving pleasure, and
is therefore strongly focused on weight. Reducing vehicle weight does
not simply boost fuel economy; combined with the innovative engines, it
complements the engine's performance potential, and vastly improves the
vehiclersquo;s core performance attributes when driving, turning and
stopping. To gain maximum benefit from the complete redesign of its base
technologies, Mazda also set itself the challenge of reducing the
weight of its vehicles by approximately 100 kilograms through a process
of "comprehensive weight reduction," which was focused mainly on the
next-generation body and chassis. This all-inclusive process aimed to
achieve a lightweight and highly-rigid body with excellent crash safety
performance by pursuing an ideal body structure, adopting new production
technologies and substituting new materials.
Congressional Mazda serves Rockville, Bethesda, Gaithersburg, and Washington, D. C.