- Mazda’s killing off its full-electric MX-30 crossover in Canada at the end of the current 2024 model year
- The model got the axe in the U.S. a year ago, but stuck around another 12 months on this side of the border
- Experts grumble that a 161-km range and CDN$42,650 price tag may have done in its sales
Mazda’s first fully electric offering in Canada, its MX-30 crossover, will see the axe at the end of the 2024 model year, the automaker said late September. The car launched in Quebec and British Columbia in 2021 before being rolled out across the rest of the country in February 2023. It was withdrawn from the U.S. market last year, at the end of model-year 2023, but Canada got it for one more go-around before it met its end here, too.
“With our focus on providing more fuel efficient and electrified options that our customers want, Mazda Canada has decided to end sales of the MX-30 EV compact crossover at the end of the current 2024 model year,” the company said in a statement, reminiscing on how the vehicle acted as “the first step on our electrification journey.”
It noted that several new electrified models will supplant the MX-30, “such as the CX-70 and CX-90 mild hybrid (MHEV) and plug-in hybrid (PHEV) models, and the CX-50 Hybrid, which will go on sale this fall.”
Reviewers in Canada and the U.S. – as well as here at Driving.ca – made note that the MX-30s battery range of roughly 161 km (100 miles) per charge may have narrowed its appeal. Its price tag wasn’t exactly entry-level, either, with a base MSRP of $42,650 for the 2024 model year. (Rivals like the Hyundai Kona Electric nearly matched that, starting at $46,400, for example, but offered battery range estimates around 415 km [258 miles].)
As a result, it garnered but 662 sales in Canada in 2023, which was actually down from 2022’s peak of 812 sales, all out of Quebec and B.C., of course. An arguably more practical plug-in hybrid EV (PHEV) variant made it to production in some overseas markets, but was apparently never seriously considered for North America.
Mazda’s pivot to EV is a slow but sure one, if you ask pundits, but the automaker is aiming to introduce seven or eight new EVs by 2030. In the near-future, a hybridized version of the next-generation CX-5 is apparently due out soon, as is a vehicle based on the Mazda’s first-ever electric-specific platform. Its transition to battery-driven products has so far been largely abetted by a partnership with Toyota, which is supplying some of the powertrain components on the CX-50 Hybrid, for example.
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