Mazda managing director Craig Roberts
In 2019, Mazda determined to reposition itself within the international automobile market as a extra premium model. The change has seen its gross sales figures fall in South Africa.
Pushing the model right into a extra premium place was all the time going to lead to a gross sales decline, however different elements have additionally created challenges for Mazda since 2019.
Whereas gross sales for many manufacturers have nonetheless not reached pre-Covid ranges, one of many causes behind Mazda’s even greater decline has been the brand new entrants into the market over the previous few years, Mazda managing director Craig Roberts instructed the Mail & Guardian.
“From a Mazda perspective, we’ve been going via a model repositioning globally and, since 2019, we’ve been transferring to larger-platform autos. The CX-60 is definitely the smallest of these larger-platform autos,” he stated.
“So, we’ve received extra challenges. With transferring upmarket, and model repositioning into greater segments, there’s much less quantity alternative and pricing is way greater in these segments. So, we’ve needed to stability and handle that and, basically, we at the moment are attempting to compete on a price proposition.”
Whereas Mazda is a legacy model in South Africa, corporations like Chery and GWM proceed to promote extra autos. In January, each Chinese language manufacturers have been within the high 10 for brand new autos offered within the nation, whereas Mazda had fallen off the checklist.
Roberts famous that the emergence of Chinese language autos had additionally contributed to the drop in gross sales for legacy manufacturers, however added that Mazda had aligned its costs extra to what the Chinese language producers have been bringing in now.
Mazda is promoting its best-selling CX-5 mannequin for R499 000, which strains up with costs for Haval’s Jolion Professional, Chery’s Tiggo 7 Professional and Jaecoo’s J7.
Whereas the powertrain within the CX-5 outdoes these autos, the know-how could be the place it falls behind.
Roberts acknowledged that Mazda needed to replace the applied sciences for its autos to maintain up with rivals.
“We are also speaking a couple of generational problem. It’s now extra primarily based round know-how. Earlier than, while you launched a automobile, it was all concerning the powertrain. We’ve needed to improve sure applied sciences within the facelifts that we’ve introduced in as a result of we’ve needed to adapt,” he stated.
“We will’t depend on simply Skyactiv dependable 2.0 litre engines anymore to promote autos — now we have to adapt when it comes to know-how.”
Nevertheless, regardless of rumours of an exit from South Africa final 12 months, Roberts confirmed that Mazda was right here to remain and can be bringing extra fashions into the nation over the following two years.
“We’ll carry the CX-80 plug-in hybrid this 12 months, a brand new CX-5, a CX-60 plug-in hybrid by 2026 after which the Mazda 6e in 2028, to cap off this specific sequence of fashions,” he stated.
Three of the 4 new fashions Mazda is bringing into the nation can be new-energy autos. It will push the model additional into the extra premium house.
Roberts stated it was necessary for native producers to embrace new-energy autos and construct hybrid or battery-energy autos.
He believes that, as soon as this occurs, South Africans will start to undertake new-energy autos, which needs to be round 2028. For this reason the marque must section in its new-energy autos from 2025, till 2028, when it introduces the all-electric Mazda 6e to South Africa.