Toyota is recycling old EV batteries to help power Mazda's production line

This seems very bizarre given Mazda is probably the least (of all "major" manufacturers) focused on EV and electric initiatives.

Mazda only had one EV, the MX-30 EV. Less than 600 of the MX-30 EV were sold in the US during its production. It was a complete flop right out of production. Mazda leadership has been notorious for pushing rotary engines and shifting further away from EV initiatives.

Did you even read the article? It has nothing to do with producing EVs, they are using the old EV batteries to help power manufacturing facilities.

This is very bizarre because that's exactly what GP was pointing out.

it's unrelated to the manufacturing of EVs. If any factory reaches a significant energy generation (usually this means from solar) it makes sense to look into a battery solution. It just happens to be Mazda's manufacturing plant.

Mazda as a company has a very good track record of adopting green production initiatives. For example, they were one of the first to switch to water based paint to reduce VOC emissions, and specifically formulating the paint to not require heat-drying to lower energy use.

Their current stance seems to be that PHEVs are better than EVs for the environment because it better matches the driving patterns of the typical customer and charging availability, and minimizes the weight of the vehicle and production of batteries, both of which are still contribute significantly to pollution.

In theory, that seems sound. In practice, there is very little information on efficiency details for vehicles like the CX-90 PHEV. At first glance, it seems other manufacturers are outperforming Mazda's PHEVs with standard hybrids.

There are so many questions this (the battery storage) raises regarding ROI and alternatives. I think it's great they're trying something, but I can't help but wonder if this will be another failed attempt on their track record.

The batteries are sourced from manufactured EVs. This is a later stage of the battery lifecycle that began with manufacturing of an EV.

seemed like they were pointing out that Mazda EV offerings are bad and that they don't worry about EV initiatives. That doesn't have much to do with studying how to put older batteries to use - EVs can be bad for many reasons.

To me it seems perfectly reasonable to try to find a way to leverage depleted EV batteries for a factory - whether or not it's producing EVs or not.

Mazda punches way above their weight when it comes to "moonshot" innovation over and over again. Few of them really "succeed" commercially (Rotary engine, miller-cycle engine, HCCI) but I respect them for constantly pushing the technology forward.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_Wankel_engine

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_cycle

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyactiv#Skyactiv-X

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homogeneous_charge_compression...