Slowly but surely, the automotive world is going electric. With the Kia EV9 and Hyundai Ioniq 9, you can now get a battery-powered three-row family-friendly SUV. Luxury customers can grab the Mercedes-Benz EQS sedan instead of a traditional S-Class, and even Ford offers an all-electric F-150 pickup truck, the Lightning. There are a lot of great choices in the EV world today, and one automaker may be poised to electrify its most legendary vehicle.
- Founded
-
1920
- Founder
-
Jujiro Matsuda
- Headquarters
-
Fuchū, Aki, Hiroshima, Japan
- Current CEO
-
Akira Marumoto
- Status
-
Active
- Total Vehicles Sold In 2022
-
332,756
Related
The Next Mazda MX-5 Miata Will Be The Best Ever And Here’s Why
Mazda revealed some details about the next MX-5. And it’s time to get excited.
Is The Miata Going Electric? It Sure Could Be
According to some U.S. patent applications, which were published on April 10, 2025, Mazda may be developing a battery-powered Miata sports car. The Hiroshima, Japan-based company doesn’t explicitly call out the Miata in these documents, instead referring to an “electric automobile,” but just look at the included photos. That sure ain’t a reborn B-Series compact truck or an all-electric CX-90 SUV.
According to one of these patent applications, the vehicle in question is designed to have “sufficient installation quantity of the battery, providing the superior layout of the motor for the yaw moment of inertia by making the motor be close to a central portion, in the longitudinal direction, of the vehicle as much as possible.” In simple terms, it sounds like an all-electric Miata might have a centrally mounted motor – or at least, the traction motor fitted just ahead of the rear axle where it powers the wheels through a short driveshaft – for better weight distribution and enhanced dynamics. But that’s not all.
Another key aspect of this design is the placement of battery cells. It appears Mazda engineers are sprinkling modules throughout various parts of the car, at the front of the traditional floor tunnel, in the rear, and, curiously, even ahead of the passenger seat.
Mazda Patents Movable Battery Pack
And that is where things get especially interesting, because Mazda has also developed a movable battery pack. Yes, you read that correctly, a battery pack that can be moved. As printed in another patent application, the battery on the passenger side is bulky and heavy, “the longitudinal weight balance or the lateral weight balance of the vehicle can be adjusted by moving the assistant-driver’s-seat side battery by means of the battery-moving device.” The application continues, “It becomes possible by this adjustment to properly set the weight balance depending on existence or non-existence of the passenger seated in the assistant driver’s seat, the weight of the driver seated in the driver’s seat, or the like.” So, basically, a future electric Miata could use a portion of its bulky and heavy battery pack to improve vehicle handling, rather than just making it worse.
Of course, patent applications and actual, drivable production vehicles are two different things, but Mazda sure has some clever ideas here. Mounting the motor in the center of the vehicle and using it the power the rear wheels through a short driveshaft makes a lot of sense, as does having smaller battery packs installed throughout the vehicle, rather than just in the floor. But that movable battery assembly raises some big questions. How effective could this really be? Does it work reliably? And if you have a giant battery assembly immediately ahead of the passenger – as shown in the patent illustrations – does this negatively impact vehicle comfort?
These questions – and many more – will have to be addressed if Mazda ever builds an all-electric Miata or introduces these new ideas in a different vehicle.
