MX-30 R-EV 2023 Review | First Drive

Ever the contrarian, Mazda continues to persist with its weird and wonderful MX-30, which in the three years it’s been on sale has proven to offer equal parts of both, with a splash of frustration. It looks great, drives really nicely and has a pleasant and distinctive cabin. The suicide doors are a bit gimmicky (but still cool) and the rear cabin the yield limited access to is relatively cramped.

The most frustrating bit? The thimble of a battery and its commensurate difficult-to-justify tiny range figures. Let’s be unashamedly clear, here: 124 miles of stated range (so likely 100 or less in the real world) feels downright weedy in today’s market. It wasn’t exactly impressive back at its 2020 launch, either. That said, for that limited window of buyers who don’t need the capacity to hop counties, the MX-30 has been a short-range EV crossover, for short-range EV hatchback money. Which was all the more frustrating for those who liked the car but couldn’t really justify a purchase given its limited battery capacity.

Now, in 2023, the new MX-30 R-EV is coming to the rescue of drivers who love the looks and the whole ‘Mazda’ vibe, but couldn’t deal with the short range. This thing now offers range figures of more than 350 miles in the real world. If you think the 35.5kWh battery of the original has tripled in size, you’d be mistaken. Instead of new batch of cells, there’s a petrol cap leading to a tank which feeds an engine, and not just any engine. Yes, Mazda has brought back the rotary, as a range-extending generator. As if the doors weren’t enough, this is about the most ‘Mazda’ Mazda Mazda has launched in a good few years.

It’s still a good-looking thing, is the MX-30. Especially as similar crossovers go, like the Nissan Juke and Toyota C-HR. Mazda’s Kodo design language translates well into a design that’s distinctive without being fussy and elegant, without being plain. The sloping roofline has been expertly judged, stopping short of making it a saloon on stilts. We love the lights at the front and rear, especially those rears, which could be dropped wholesale onto a brand new sportscar and look great. The indicators that fade out are an especially nice detail.

But given that the R-EV is something of a debug for the MX-30, adding some sorely-needed range and versatility, could we have done with a nip and tuck for 2023? I think so, especially next to the sharp-looking CX-60 that was Mazda’s star turn of last year. The MX-30 looks a bit, well, 2020, which let’s remember, will soon be four years ago. It looks good but it’s feeling its age, and no those little R-EV and rotary-with-an-e badges aren’t quite enough to make it stand out from the compromised EV it’s here to clean up after.

The MX-30 R-EV features a 17.5kWh battery that feeds the front wheels via an electric motor. That battery is fed by both a plug when stationary, regenerative braking when slowing down and an 830cc single-rotor rotary power unit which sits up front. On the move, it effectively acts as a range extender with no physical connection to the wheels. Unlike the BMW i3 range extender, which works very similarly (and also has suicide doors, go figure), the MX-30 R-EV has quite a large 50-litre fuel tank, which is what informs the impressive jump in range.

The rotary can also boost the performance of the MX-30 R-EV when you ask for hard acceleration. The electric range is around 40 miles in the real world but the rotary usually fires up before you’re below 40 per cent electric range. So expect that thrumming mill to fire up after about 20-25 miles of driving and it really does add a good degree of versatility.

It is a thrummer too, very much letting cabin occupants know it’s out there turning hydrocarbons into electrons. It will not almost under any circumstances run while the car is sat still and will take almost every opportunity to cut out and let the battery and motors handle things themselves. Even if the battery is low, if you’re going downhill and the battery isn’t being taxed, the engine will cut. The way you keep it on, is by forcing ‘Charge’ mode, which allows you to select a desired charge level – as low as 40 per cent and up to 100 per cent, if that wasn’t obvious – that the car will aim for as you continue your journey.

You might not want to, though. Just as the 787B is an acquired taste of raw noise, the MX-30, which of course is from the other end of the rotary multiverse, makes a bit more noise than you’d like when it’s running. We’d even go as far as to say it’s a bit of a droner, especially when going slow enough that road noise doesn’t mask it. The performance is okay, with the addition of the range extender allowing the headline 170PS (125kW) figure. At least, it’s good at average speeds. Don’t expect to be executing scalpel-sharp, smooth fast overtakes at A-road and motorway speeds. The re-gen is fine too, with not too much of a sense of the crossover from motor to disc and pad. It’s also adaptable, with the strongest mode allowing for one-pedal driving even in sturdy slowdown situations.

In terms of the chassis? Well, it’s a Mazda which has always seemed to be a byword for ‘better than you’d expect, or than it has any right to be’. It steers well, if not with too much feel and the body roll is well judged, albeit there is quite a bit of it if you push too hard. This is a car that feels nice, with a well-judged chassis, over a flowing road at six or seven tenths, which sadly, is more than can be said for many cars of its ilk.

The interior has a similar feeling of being well thought-out, like someone really cares about this stuff. The cork material is novel and enjoyable thing depending on your tastes and the quality everywhere else is reasonable. Design-wise, it’s intuitive with a convincingly faux-premium look with a solid to feel all the physical buttons to back it up. The view out’s decent, though as the sloping roofline would suggest, room in the back and boot is somewhat limited. If you’re a keen driver with a young family, you should feel pleasantly at home in the MX-30. The only issue is, well, things move swiftly in the world of car interiors these days and the look is a little dated, especially in terms of tech, but we’ll get to that next.

It seems every six months a new generation of car interiors debuts, with screens that have just a little bit less dead black plastic around the edges and more pixels per inch than what came before. As such, the fact that the R-EV has followed a full three years in from when the EV first landed in the UK means this is a brand-new car with a three-year-old design. Like on the outside, it looks great, but could the screens be a bit crisper? Could the driver’s display do with an update? Could the UI be a bit flashier? It’s hardly comparable to the old Defender but this is a fast-paced area of development in the industry.

Nevertheless, it all works quite well and as far as options and standard gear goes, Mazda as usual, does pretty well. As standard you get DAB radio, climate control and Mazda radar cruise control. You also get that 8.8-inch screen for free, along with your preferred smartphone integration facility. The top spec Makoto trim adds a three-pin plug socket, a fancy 12-speaker Bose sound system and a 360-degree camera system and an electric sunroof. In terms of paid options? If you so wish, the lovely Soul Red paint will cost you a cool £1,800. In fact, the options are mostly paint colours. All in, a well-equipped car for £31,250 base-, £33,150 middling-, or £35,550 top-spec.

Oh boy is it hard to come to conclusions with this MX-30 R-EV. It’s a real head vs. heart thing. It looks great, is pleasant to drive – perishingly rare in this segment – and is now more versatile than it ever was as a full EV, an outcome achieved with really interesting, brand-specific engineering. But whether that tech makes the MX-30 R-EV the ultimate choice against comparable rivals is up for debate.

As was ever the case, whether the rotary is the best solution continues to be up for debate. It is indeed light and compact, and adds that much-needed extra range. But it’s noisy, with questionable real-world efficiency. We’d love a bit more time to monitor how it does in day-to-day driving, rather than hoofing around North Wales for a few short hours. That’s before we’ve even speculated about reliability. Overall, has it been executed exactly as well as it could have been, or as well as we’d hoped it would? Probably not.

But no doubt, this is the crossover for JDM cultists. It’ll sell to some by virtue of simply having a rotary regardless of its capability. And we get that. We love that it exists, we just wish it were about ten per cent better objectively than it seems to have turned out to be. Roll on the RX-9, or whatever the sportscar with the two-rotor version of this powertrain turns out to be.