With a cabin designed to create a sense of being 'enveloped in openness', the Mazda MX-30’s interior combines style, quality, ergonomic simplicity, comfort and sustainable materials to ensure the perfect environment for drivers and passengers alike. Incorporating the characteristic quality and high-levels of standard equipment found across all Mazda models, the MX-30’s cabin is bespoke to Mazda’s first production electric vehicle, yet familiar to those adopting to an EV for the first time.
What is unique to the MX-30 though is its centre pillar-less freestyle doors with custom-designed hinges. The front doors open forwards to an angle of up to 82° and rear doors backwards, to 80°. This large aperture allied to the absence of a centre pillar ensures the easiest possible entry to and exit from both front and rear seats. The rear door trim incorporates a vertical grip that makes opening and closing the door easier, with less burden on the wrist, even with the door wide open. The front seats are equipped with a walk-in mechanism that, with a single touch, folds the seatback forward and simultaneously slides the whole seat toward the front, ensuring smooth entry to and exit from the rear seats. The cross-section of the side sills and shape of the side sill garnish are also carefully designed to facilitate smooth, effortless exit from the cabin.
To create a sense of space and openness, the front seats of the Mazda MX-30 are separated by a floating console. This not only creates a useful open space between the left and right sides, but also has been carefully designed to enhance a sense of togetherness connecting driver and passenger for a more pleasing and communicative driving experience. The floating centre console that stands independent of the dashboard also adds additional storage space for the front seat occupants. The rear door glass and quarter windows are positioned to enable rear seat occupants to look out from a natural seated position, while the rounded space created by the doors, side trim and rear seats is designed to convey a feeling of being wrapped in reassuring comfort.
Like all Mazda models, huge attention has been paid to the driving position and the connection between car and driver. The MX-30’s seating is set higher to secure a clear and unobstructed view. The clear view of the bonnet from the driver's seat makes it easier for the driver to gain a clear sense of the vehicle's extremities and place it accurately on the road; an asset when driving on narrow roads or parking.
The shape of the rear door glass and quarter windows was carefully designed in accordance with studies on human characteristics. This enables drivers to turn their heads in place and clearly see vehicles diagonally behind the Mazda MX-30 thus avoiding blind spots.
The MX-30 shares the same carefully considered cockpit design found on all Mazda cars, with a horizontally symmetrical layout centred on the driver. It offers an ergonomically excellent driving position that feels natural and supportive, and allows the driver to focus on road and traffic ahead.
The steering wheel offers a 45 mm vertical and 70 mm horizontal tilt and telescopic adjustment range. And the driver's seat on all model grades features slide, lift, recline and cushion tilt adjustment mechanisms to provide the ideal driving position to the widest possible range of driver physiques.
The driver's instrument cluster incorporates a central, 7-inch TFT LCD display. This provides drivers with a variety of information in a clear, condensed fashion, allowing them to understand it instantly with minimum visual distraction. Fitted as standard across all models, the colour windscreen-projected head-up display shows all relevant driving information directly in the driver's line of site to minimise distraction from the road ahead. While remaining committed to Mazda’s characteristic, ergonomically excellent, driver-centric cockpit design, the MX-30 furthers the concept of the horizontal layout to give the interior a simpler, wider look. One change implemented to create a look of greater simplicity within the cabin is the introduction of a 7-inch touch-screen air-conditioning control panel; a Mazda first. In addition, the floating centre console, the upper section of the instrument panel, the driver's instrument binnacle hood and related trim are all designed to create a sense of continuity and lightness.
While these innovations have a functional value, they have also been developed to appeal to the senses, enhancing the perceived quality of the cabin environment. The design was subsequently honed through a collaborative effort with engineers using analytic data on human characteristics. As a result, from the moment one of its doors is opened, the cabin exudes a strong impression of liberating spaciousness, while enhancing every occupants feeling of homogeny with the car. This doesn’t just apply to the driver, for example the MX-30 takes advantage of its freestyle doors by using the side door trim for the rear seats to create an armrest design that resembles a couch, thus creating a cosseting rear seat ambience more akin to that of living room furniture.
Development of materials and colours for the MX-30 focused on modern styling with a natural, high-quality appearance. Mazda also strove to use materials that show an even greater respect for environmental conservation, whilst striking a balance between sustainability and the natural appeal of the materials selected, and comfort, fit and finish.
Because no trees are felled and only the bark is stripped away to obtain the material, cork is a naturally derived product with low environmental impact. For the highest sustainability, the Mazda MX-30 features cork left over from the production of bottle stoppers. The material’s inherent warmth, gentle touch and cushioning are put to good use in the centre console’s tray sections as well as on the door grips.
To ensure the high level of durability required for use as car parts, Mazda developed a dedicated coating and a special technique to process the cork and its base material at the same time. Cork also pays tribute to Mazda’s heritage, harking back to the company foundation in 1920 as the Toyo Cork Kogyo Corporation.
The upper section of the door is trimmed in a recycled fabric designed exclusively for its pile, density and colour. Different from previous applications of plastics or leather, the fabric contains air, providing a soft touch and reinforcing the sense of openness within in the cabin. Reducing the MX-30’s ecological footprint, the fabric is made from recycled PET bottles. Development of a new method for the integrated moulding of textile and plastic fibres made it possible to create a material with a soft touch that can be processed easily.
The MX-30’s interior colours have been coordinated to combine a rich range of variations with both functional and visual appeal. Parts of the seat with which the occupant makes direct contact are fabric covered, while the seat backs are finished in artificial leather. Some of the colour-coordinated seat fabrics use up to 20% recycled thread, while maintaining tactile appeal and a high-quality appearance.
Prime-Line cars feature light grey cloth with dark grey trim, while Exclusive-Line and Makoto grades features light grey cloth combined with stone leatherette, this interior scheme delivers a bright and modern look that pairs stone coloured leatherette with melange toned fabric, orange seat stitching and a natural cork finish. On Makoto there’s also the option to go for dark grey cloth and brown leatherette or dark grey cloth with black leatherette, which delivers a more industrial vintage look with its darker coloured cork finish.
Mazda's premium leatherette belies the conventional wisdom that artificial leather is merely a poor substitute for the real thing. Developed for the MX-30, it features a vintage leather texture printed onto a high-quality artificial leather base. A silicone coating with a precisely-controlled surface layer thickness is then applied, giving the material an appearance of depth and a pleasing tactile quality. This artificial leather is produced using water rather than organic solvents, helping to reduce its environmental impact. Real leather is used on the steering wheel and gear selector to ensure the best tactile experience on these high use areas.
As you’d expect, the MX-30 also features the very latest in infotainment and technology. The MX-30 adopts the same 8.8-inch, dashtop-mounted centre display introduced in the Mazda3 and CX-30. In addition to a two-screen configuration that uses the widescreen format to make the device even easier to use, content is displayed in the same font as on other on-board devices such as the gauges, giving visual consistency of instrumentation throughout the cabin.
Mazda's Commander control offers fast, easy and intuitive use of the system, ensuring drivers quickly learn to operate it without the need to look down.
A Mazda first, the MX-30 features a 7-inch touchscreen display at the front of the centre console. When the driver opens the door and gets into the car, a graphic appears on the screen, subtly changing appearance depending on the time of day and temperature to create a unique mood for each drive. Once the car is switched on, the screen displays the air-conditioning controls. The 7-inch display serves as a touch-screen air-conditioning control panel, offering controls for temperature, airflow and seat heating. All controls are displayed in simple fashion and functions are grouped intelligently so that all operations can be performed quickly and intuitively. The air-conditioning system is programmed so that a quick tap of the screen will adjust the temperature by an increment of 0.5 degrees, whilst a swipe of the finger will alter it in steps of 3 degrees. The screen area that responds to touch is slightly larger than the graphic itself, helping shorten the time the driver needs to look at the screen. In addition, the system also provides audible feedback to confirm that each action has been completed.
Even better, for ultimate functionality traditional push switches mounted on the display’s perimeter offer alternative control over A/C on-off, auto control, temperature adjustment, fan speed and window demisting. These switches are designed to be easily used by touch alone without taking your eyes off the road.
The MX-30 features the latest version of Mazda Connect, which includes enhancements such as a quicker start up, improved image and sound quality, a built-in 3D gyro sensor, and a free word search function that lets users search for destinations by entering a combination of keywords. The system supports Apple CarPlay® and Android Auto™, as standard, via USB connection to ensure a convenient user experience with smart phone integration.
The MX-30 introduced new functions and services that will make life with an electric vehicle even more convenient. Mazda plans to add functions that are only possible with an electric vehicle, such as notification to a customer's smartphone if they forget to plug in the charging cable, the ability to control charging using a timer, monitor charging progress, view the status of the battery and adjust vehicle climate control settings via the MyMazda smartphone App. Amongst the EV functions of the latest MyMazda App is remote setting of the charging process, a range indicator, battery status, low battery warning messages and the ability to search for charging stations and relay the information to the navigation system. Further general functions include the remote control of the air-conditioning - including windscreen ventilation and rear screen heating, remote control of the door interlock system, vehicle status - such as tyre pressures, door locking, etc, warning messages and a Send Route to Car navigation aid.
The MX-30 may be equipped with a choice of two high quality sound systems - the unique Mazda Harmonic Acoustics system or the 12-speaker Bose premium sound system fitted to the Makoto. The Mazda Harmonic Acoustics system features speakers perfectly positioned to produce the best sound and reach the human ear as easily as possible in the cabin environment. Uniquely, it features 3L woofers positioned in the sides of the front cowls rather than the front door panels, as well as 2.5 cm tweeters in the left and right sail garnishes and 8 cm squawkers on the upper section of the front and rear door trims.
The Bose 12-speaker premium audio system offers another level of sound performance and listening pleasure – using the innovative Bose BassMatch system configuration to deliver deeper, more impactful low-frequency reproduction along with clearer audio performance throughout the cabin. The BassMatch configuration combines a pair of low-frequency enclosures, placed near the kick panels in the front cowls, with a third bass source positioned in the rear of the vehicle. This layout generates more acoustic energy and reduces buzz and vibrations even when playing music at high volumes. The Bose system also includes mid-range drivers in each door and in the centre of the instrument panel for smooth sound distribution. High-frequency tweeters in each mirror patch and rear surround speakers located in each C-pillar complete the package and help deliver balanced sound for all occupants. Advanced Bose technologies, including Centerpoint surround signal processing, AudioPilot noise-compensation technology, and selectable listening modes help ensure a closer connection between passengers and their music inside the Mazda MX-30.
Comfortable, stylish, well-equipped and high-tech you can read more on the MX-30’s cabin materials here: https://www.insidemazda.co.uk/2020/04/01/cork-and-cars-the-little-known-story-of-mazda-and-cork/ and here: https://www.insidemazda.co.uk/2020/05/01/mazda-mx-30-highlights-mazdas-30-year-commitment-to-eco-friendly-plastics/
To read more on the MX-30’s connectivity click here: https://www.insidemazda.co.uk/2020/07/20/stay-connected-with-the-mazda-mx-30/