Mazda Demio SkyActiv tops Japan's "Eco Cars" survey, Toyota Prius #2

What is the octane rating of Japan's regular?
For the US, the Skyactiv-G will be asking for premium, or, because our fear of the unknown and premium gas, will have a lower compression ratio.

 

Ford has said they will be using a lower compression unit that can use regular. Mazda has not confirmed what version they will be shipping to the united states, but the demio skyactiv would require premium here.

 

Mazda will not sell this engine outside JDM due to pricing... it has everything you can imagine, including start/stop and it becomes too expensive to export.

 

old news but skyactiv is the name mazda is giving to a family of energy saving technologies, that can be mixed and matched.
2012 Mazda 3 Gets SKYACTIV Engine: Mazda 3 News

We don't know yet the hp or even the size and compression yet, but mazda will be bringing the technology here, and ford will be using it too.

 

sure, but we are talking about Mazda 2 1.3l engine in the article... which wont be sold outside of Japan due to the high price, according to Mazda.

So i dont think we can draw conclusions for the 2.0l engine to be used Euro/US spec vehicles, which will also be influenced with pricing.

 

Oh, sorry. Yes, I only am saying Mazda and Ford will bring skyactiv engines here. What I read before was they were unlikely to bring the 1.3L here because its only 83hp. Which does make it a low power car for the price they need to charge, so you can call it price. I doubt it would get much higher mpg on the epa cycle than a more powerfull skyactiv, the japanese cycle is quite different. Auto start-stop also as you said likely won't come anytime soon because of price, but.... Ford will make all their cars auto stop start by 2016. If the ford strategy works, I'm sure mazda will bring them over here.

 

Yes

 

uhm? why would they be getting 50 MPG EPA in Japan?
No they wont.

Little Mazda 2 with all the tech they could get that works well on Japanese cycle (start/stop), that wont work well on EPA, still doesnt compare to Prius (it is 30% less efficient).

From there, how do you work out that bigger Mazda 3, with 2.0l engine will end up being more efficient than Mazda 2 with this much smaller engine?

 

I'm surprised that Mazda didn't compromise and offer a Skyactiv-G engine that runs off 89 pump octane unleaded, since the medium-grade unleaded petrol is widely available in North America.

By using 89 pump octane, the engine could have been bumped up to 12.8 or 13.0 to 1 compression ratio, upping the fuel economy to 45-47 mpg.

 

People are just pennywise and pound foolish when it comes to gasoline prices in general. When a new gas station and convience store opened up it town, it was packed with lines of cars. The old station across the corner was empty. I might have been its only customer that day.

The difference in price?
One cent.

It's the same short sightedness when it comes to premium. A tank will cost more, but the improved economy generally works out to same cost per mile. So, for the same cost, you burn less fuel, and also get the full power output of the engine.

Toyota, at least in the past, recommended 89 octane for their V6. I know my friend never put it in his Camry.

The issue with the Mazda3 and the headers is only for one year until the redesigned model comes out.

Drive train also includes the transmission. Mazda claims their new automatic combines the benefits of the tradition (step) auto, dual clutch, and CVT into one package.

 

From the Car Talk site:

Finally, here's a nice irony: to increase gas' octane rating, companies
add ethanol, when they're mixing up a batch of premium fuel.
Interestingly, ethanol actually contains less energy than
untreated gas, so the net result from the ethanol component is a
reduction in your MPG. Other premium additives*, however,
have the reverse effect, and slightly increase your MPG. So okay,
overall premium provides a very slight net increase in MPG, but
it's so slight that we swear you won't notice the difference.

*Other octane boosting additives include aromatic hydrocarbons, ethers
and alcohol (usually ethanol or methanol).

From what I've read, it doesn't hurt an engine designed to run on
regular to be run on premium. Also, it probably won't hurt an engine
designed to run on premium to be run on regular due the computer
controls on virtually all contemporary cars that retard the ignition
timing when pre-ignition, "knock," is detected. The result of the timing
being retarded is a loss of power.

I would think that any loss of power would be most noticable, and even
rise to the level of being considered unacceptable, on the smaller
engines designed to run on premium being discussed in this thread.

I have not been able to determine if the amount of ethanol in let's say
E15 regular gas is enough to act as an octane booster and thus allow its
substitution without power loss in an engine designed to run on premium
grade gasoline.

 

Octane rating - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

From searching:
- Most countries, including Japan use RON. USA and Canada use AKI.
- Multiply RON by .95 to get an approximate AKI equivalent
- (From more searching and reading) The minimum in Japan is RON 89, but stations generally serve 90+. But, higher octane ratings are readily available.
- Japanese gasoline is up to E3.

 

Ethanol's AKI octane is around 100. E85 is 94 to 96. E15 should be around 89.

 

you can be as foolish as you want, fact is that Mazda2 with 1.3l engine gets 30% less mpg under Japanese cycle than Prius... so lets say it gets 40 MPG under EPA.

Mazda 3 with 2.0l will only get less than that, especially since things like start/stop that work under japanese cycle do not work with EPA one.