Mazda May Delay Some New Models Due to COVID-19-related Economic Slowdown

The business challenges brought on by the global coronavirus pandemic is going to have a lasting effect over at Mazda. This was revealed in the company’s 2020 Annual Report.

For its fiscal year ending March 2020, Mazda has seen its global sales down 9 percent to 1.419 million units. This is how each Mazda model faired globally:

• Mazda CX-3: 120,000 sold
• Mazda CX-30: 73,000 sold
• Mazda CX-4: 45,000 sold
• Mazda CX-5: 416,000 sold
• Mazda CX-8: 27,000 sold
• Mazda CX-9: 61,000 sold
• Mazda2: 139,000 sold
• Mazda3: 309,000 sold
• Mazda6: 120,000 sold
• Mazda MX-5: 27,000 sold
• Mazda BT-50: 32,000 sold

Closer to home, Mazda says sales across Australia and ASEAN combined fell 16 percent or to about 345,000 units. 

In Australia alone, Mazda’s largest market outside of the United States and Japan, sales fell 18 percent due to the large-scale forest fires there. 

Meanwhile, ASEAN sales are down 24 percent to 103,000 units with Thailand’s volume dropping by 27 percent (due to the Thai government’s stricter examination of automobile loans), and Vietnam down 20 percent (due to their refusal to get into a price war with other carmakers).

According to Mazda, in ASEAN and Australia, 55 percent of vehicles sold remain their passenger cars, while only 45 percent are crossover SUVs. This is similar to market such as Japan and China where majority of vehicles sold remain passenger cars at 64 percent and 63 percent respectively. However, in the United States and Europe, crossover SUVs dominate Mazda sales accounting for 69 percent and 60 percent of their total volumes there.

Moving forward to 2021, Mazda says they foresee a further 8 percent decline in their global sales (1.3 million in total). This has the carmaker considering to postpone the milestones they set out in their Medium-Term Management Plan by at least one year, including the timing of new and updated vehicles.

As a refresher, under Mazda’s Medium-Term Management Plan, they plan to invest heavily on improving their technology and products. This includes the introduction of a new large platform architecture which can accommodate not only 4-cylinder engines, but inline-6 gasoline and diesel engines, as well as mild and plug-in hybrids; the roll out of Mazda Connect 2 with on-board communication services; and their own brand of autonomous driving technology called Mazda Co-Pilot.

That said, Mazda says they are confident of recovering profitability by the second half of fiscal year ending March 2022.

Source: Car Guides PH