Mazda has decided to sell diesel only cars in Japan for 2015, this will apply to the domestic models, hoping to convince the drivers who are using petrol-electric vehicles and think that diesels are gone.
Chief executive of Mazda Japan placed his diesel bet in Tokyo on Friday when they launch the CX-3 as a compact SUV. He said that the majority of drivers in Japan like diesel engines. Usually, diesel engines offer higher torque from low revs and relatively extra power.
These qualities of diesel engines offer the strong base for higher sales. Chief executive of Mazda further said that the SUV segment in Japan is growing very rapidly and expected to double in size by 2020. With the increase in demand of SUVs in Japan, competition is also likely to increase from Nissan, Subaru, Toyota and Hyundai.
Mazda has aggressively promoted diesel engines in Japan, because it is the second largest market after the United States. Mazda said they are three per cent behind the sales of petrol variants with 79,000 units sold in Japan alone, last year.
Mazda has introduced advanced fuel efficient technologies to reduce the carbon emissions and refine the engine performance. Mazda, however, performed very well in past financial period because of weak Yen. It expects to sell 1.4 million units till March. 225,000 are planned to be sold in Japanese market only. It was 1.33 million in the year before last year.
Mazda has a small model line-up so, it is very necessary that every model they introduce, to be very successful. Mazda plans to manufacture about 150,000 CX-3 models this year from its manufacturing facility in Hiroshima and will be sold in 120 countries all over the world.
