This EV Isn’t Really A Mazda. It’s Better

Mazda has failed at making its own electric vehicles.

Its only attempt, the MX-30, had plenty of style and even a rotary-engine range extender, but it was just not a convincing product and an overall sales flop. Now, instead of spending billions developing a new in-house EV, Mazda has done the sensible thing and pasted its signature design onto a Chinese electric sedan. Turns out, that wasn’t a bad move.

The Mazda 6e was one of the eight cars I drove while taking part in the Eurocharge 2025 EV road trip from Romania into the Alps and then back home. Driving the 6e was the second-most pleasant surprise of the trip after the Hyundai Inster, which is getting its own dedicated article where I explain why I think it’s so great.

Soul Red Meets China

Photo by: Ciprian Mihai/Autocritica

Tapping into a joint venture with Changan, China’s fourth best-selling carmaker, Mazda decided to reskin the Changan Deepal L07 to create the EZ-6, which here in Europe is known as the Mazda 6e. This means it’s a rear-wheel-drive car, and one of the best things about it is how it handles a winding mountain road.

Before I dive into that, let me address how good it looks in action. Mazda has done a stellar job with the exterior design of the 6e. It still has the Deepal L07’s proportions, including its unusual-looking rear end with its high-set lights, but Mazda’s designers sprinkled enough Kodo design to stop people from asking too many questions. 

Like so many vehicles these days, it follows the trend of having separate daytime running lights with smaller separate headlight projectors hidden in the black part of the fascia, but it’s one of the most successful renditions of this design trend that I’ve seen so far.

Photo by: Ciprian Mihai/Autocritica

Mazda’s Soul Red Crystal paint still works like witchcraft. It makes the 6e look so good that strangers came up to ask about it. One guy on a motorcycle rode up alongside to say he was buying one and sang its praises while we were stuck in a traffic jam going up a Swiss mountain pass. It’s one of the best reds in the game, full stop.

Even though it looks like a sedan with a small decklid, it’s actually a liftback. The only exterior design element that I’m not convinced by is the shape of the rear spoiler, which rises electrically at highway speeds—that looks cool. But when it’s down, instead of sitting flush with the upper edge of the rear light bar, there’s a gap meant to look like it has a fixed rear wing. This looks a bit strange regardless of the spoiler’s position, but when it’s down, it makes me think I left the oven door open for some reason.

My favorite thing about the 6e, though, is the fact that it’s not weirdly tall like some electric sedans and fastbacks are these days (see the Volvo ES90, Polestar 2 or the Mercedes-Benz EQ cars, for example). Even though it hides a battery in its floor, this doesn’t translate into a vehicle that looks taller than it should be, and it’s not trying to be a crossover. It just looks sleek, sporty and pretty premium.

Suede And Tall Chairs

Photo by: Ciprian Mihai/Autocritica

Open the 6e’s frameless doors, and you are greeted by a somewhat generic-looking interior that has some familiar Mazda design elements. The focal point is a big 14.6-inch screen in the middle of the dashboard. It visually dominates the whole interior, even when you’re sitting in the back. The rest of the interior design does a good job pretending it’s a Mazda, and  even though the hardpoints are the same as on the Changan.

The car I tested had the top-of-the-range cognac real leather and suede upholstery (lesser trims get the fake stuff), which helped lift an otherwise pretty generic-looking cabin and make it feel premium. Materials are generally pleasant to the touch, although you will find hard, scratchy plastic lower down. But you could say the same of a comparable BMW these days, so it’s fine.

The seats were not my favorite. They looked good, but my biggest issue with the 6e was the driving position. With the raised floor that houses the battery, Changan-Mazda couldn’t place the front seats low enough to give you a true connected feel with the car. Driving it feels like you’re perched on a barstool while riding a skateboard. That’s not very sporty, unless the sport in question is jousting.

Photo by: Ciprian Mihai/Autocritica

The seat just doesn’t go low enough, and, to make matters worse, the steering wheel didn’t offer enough reach adjustment for me to bring it as close to me as I would have liked. This resulted in less-than-ideal long-distance comfort for the driver, and, as much as I liked the car overall, it was bad enough to be a deal-breaker for me. This is an issue in some low-slung, non-crossover EVs, but it’s probably the worst example of this that I’ve experienced in a new EV.

Driving position aside, the car had enough rear legroom for someone sitting behind a six-foot driver, and it offered great practicality with its combination of a 2.5 cubic-foot (72-liter) frunk and a 16.5 cu-ft (466-liter) trunk that can expand to almost 38 cu-ft (1,074 liters) if you fold the rear seats (including the underfloor storage).

Photo by: Ciprian Mihai/Autocritica

Most functions are only available through the touchscreen, as there are no physical controls on the center console. It generally works pretty well, but the menu structure and where everything is does take some getting used to and I found the learning curve a bit steeper than in some other cars that force you to use the display. It’s not as good as a Tesla Model 3 or the new Mercedes-Benz CLA EV.

If you don’t get the fancy cowhide upholstery, the interior can look a bit generic, and it loses some tactile appeal, too. I did like the large head-up display that’s projected onto the windshield, which is as good as in more expensive cars.

Finally, A Fun Mazda EV

Photo by: Ciprian Mihai/Autocritica

There’s little to criticize when it comes to the Mazda 6e’s road manners on all types of roads. On the highway, it’s smooth, quiet and relaxed, but when the road gets twisty, it comes alive in a way I wasn’t expecting it to. A single motor drives the rear wheels with the typical planted feel of electric sedans, thanks to their heavy battery placed in the lowest part of the car.

As a dynamic package, the 6e felt great. It’s definitely the sportiest Mazda sedan that I’ve ever driven, which, admittedly, isn’t a very high bar—as good as the last few Mazda 6 sedans were, they were athletic for their class and not much else. But with decently connected-feeling steering that makes quick direction changes fun and precise, it does reward a bit of sporty driving. You definitely feel that it’s the rear axle that’s powering the car and it has hardly any understeer. It just keeps carving even if you intentionally try to overcook a corner just to see what happens.

The good handling comes courtesy of a pretty stiff suspension setup, which will noticeably transmit road imperfections up through the seat. It’s typical of cars with a sporty setup, but the damping didn’t feel quite as refined and sophisticated as in cars wearing premium badges and featuring adaptive dampers, or the Tesla Model 3 with its frequency-selective dampers.

Long Range, Long Wait

Photo by: Ciprian Mihai/Autocritica

The Mazda 6e is available with a 68.8 kWh LFP pack in base trim, which is paired with a 255 hp motor and 165 kW DC fast charging. The larger 80 kWh NMC pack can only charge at 90 kW and is slightly less powerful at 241 hp. The small battery has an official WLTP range of 298 miles, while the larger pack boosts that to 343 miles.

The car I drove had the smaller battery, and the real-world range varied between a high of 267 miles with no highway driving to a low of 180 miles on one charge when only driven on the highway mostly at 80 mph. It has just enough capacity to stave off anxiety driving on a full charge, but isn’t large enough to be called a long-range EV.

Photo by: Ciprian Mihai/Autocritica

Charging the car up via a 400 kW station from 23% to 100% took 41 minutes, which added 60 kWh of electricity, working out to an average charging rate of 88 kW. In another charging session on a 350 kW station, the car went from 29% to 80% in 17 minutes with a much higher average measured charging power of 141 kW.

The average electricity consumption for the entire 2,795-mile Eurocharge trip came in at 3.35 miles/kWh (18.6 kWh/100 km) with approximately 80% highway driving. On the sole day of the tour where the car didn’t see a single mile of highway, its average efficiency settled at 4.06 miles/kWh (15.3 kWh/100 km) and it included going up and down the Stelvio and Gavia passes in Italy. The latter is where I saw a convoy of camouflaged Mercedes C-Class EVs.

MX-30 Who?

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Source: Ciprian Mihai/Autocritica

The Mazda 6e will probably not have a hard time finding buyers in Europe, even with its fairly steep starting price of €43,500 ($51,120), which goes over €51,000 ($59,930) if you want the big battery with all of the available options. 

Mazda die-hards will buy it because they recognize the design. Normal people may pick it because it’s actually a good car that turns heads.

It’s an experiment by Mazda, a vehicle built in China through a joint venture, but it scores pretty highly overall. It looks great, it’s quite efficient, it’s fun to drive, and it’s a far better and more serious EV than what Mazda itself was able to produce. 

Outsourcing the job to China made for a better EV than it ever could, especially since it never felt like Mazda was really trying. Interestingly, just like Mazda’s own MX-30, the Changan model that the 6e is based on is available with a range extender powertrain in China, but it’s unclear if this will find its way into the European 6e. It would certainly open it up to new buyers.

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