Mazda used the recent Japan Mobility Show to do more than just show off pretty sheet metal.
Its Vision X-Coupe concept, a striking evolution of the brand’s “Kodo – Soul of Motion” design language, doubles as a rolling test bed for Mazda’s most radical low-carbon ideas yet.
Under the long bonnet sits a plug-in hybrid system built around a two-rotor turbo rotary engine, an electric motor and a battery, delivering a hefty 510PS.
Mazda claims up to 160km of motor-only driving and as much as 800km when the engine joins in, positioning the car as a long-legged grand tourer rather than a short-hop eco special.
The real story, though, is what happens to the exhaust.
The Vision X-Coupe combines carbon-neutral fuel made from microalgae with Mazda’s “Mobile Carbon Capture” system, which packs a CO2 collector directly into the exhaust stream.
Using a zeolite-based absorbent, the device grabs CO2 at higher concentration than in ambient air, making capture more efficient.
The gas can then be reused for crop growth or turned into high-performance carbon materials in the circular economy Mazda wants to see from around 2035.
Mazda is already stress-testing the hardware in the Super Taikyu endurance series, fitting the kit to a bio-diesel Mazda3 racer.
In a four-hour race at Fuji Speedway, the system successfully adsorbed CO2 under full race conditions, and development would continue next season.
Alongside this, Mazda said it would keep refining everything from mild hybrids and full hybrids to BEVs and ever-cleaner combustion engines as it chases global carbon neutrality by 2050 and interim EU targets for 2030 and 2035.
As president and CEO Masahiro Moro put it: “The phrase, ‘The joy of driving fuels a sustainable tomorrow,’ expresses not only Mazda’s fundamental spirit, but also the core of its future challenges”.
