Mazda has unveiled two concepts at the Japan Mobility Show 2025 that offer a sneak peek at the brand’s potential future design and the technology that might lie underneath. Masahiro Moro, Mazda’s president and CEO, said the automaker “envisions a future where the more kilometers you drive, the more you help reduce carbon dioxide.”
The cars are called the Vision X-Coupe and Vision X-Compact, with the ‘X’ pronounced as ‘cross’. But there is much more to them than just their design.
The coupe is longer than Mazda6 It actually has four doors, and features a hybrid system equipped with a twin-rotor rotary engine, which can run on carbon-neutral fuel made from microalgae. It produces 503 horsepower and can travel up to 99 miles on electricity alone, which extends to nearly 500 miles with a combustion engine.
According to the automaker, as microalgae grow, it captures carbon dioxide and stores oil in its cells. Mazda This oil can then be extracted and refined into carbon-neutral fuel. The company says it has succeeded in producing more than a liter of fuel from an 11,000-liter culture tank in about two weeks. The byproduct can then be used to make food products or organic fertilizers.
Photo by: Mazda
The automaker is also working on “Mazda Mobile Carbon Capture” technology, which it says will pull carbon dioxide directly from the exhaust. The technology will debut next month in ultra-endurance racing with the Mazda 55.
The other concept, the Mazda Vision X-Compact, looks like a sports version of the Mazda car Mazda2. The X-Compact is designed to “deepen the connection between people and cars by integrating the human sensory digital model and empathic AI” and includes the brand’s “human body sensing model.”
The car can respond to your emotions, but it’s more than just choosing the perfect playlist. The car can prompt the driver to take a pleasant back road instead of the highway or warn you of a car lurking in your blind spot.
Photo by: Mazda
Designs
The Vision X-Coupe looks stunning with its silver paint, which highlights the sophistication of the brand Kudu design language. The concave fascia looks familiar yet aggressive, with LEDs extending from the lower grille towards the headlights. At the back, it has a stylized rear window and taillights that appear integrated into the body.
Inside, the four-door coupe has white seats, a green cabin, brown accents, three round gauges, and a huge screen integrated into the dashboard. It has a simple steering wheel with a few controls and a stylish steering column labeled “Mazda Vision X-Coupe.” Between the front seats is a simple rotary shifter that includes a manual mode, and Mazda also designed seatbelt buckles.
The Mazda Vision X-Compact is a small five-door hatch with very short overhangs and a wide stance. It features the same front design, with vertical LED lights extending from the lower grille opening to the slim headlights. It also features similar taillights that appear to be behind the body.
Inside, the hatch features a simple, three-spoke, flat-bottomed steering wheel with just a pair of buttons. It’s located in front of a large, round speedometer and nothing else. There’s no large digital instrument cluster, and the car lacks an infotainment display.
Instead, it has a phone holder next to the instrument cluster. There’s no large infotainment screen on the dashboard and no gratuitous number of buttons. It’s a clean and simple design, and if we didn’t have buttons, we could at least use our phones.
For now, the two cars are just concepts, but we hope to see some of their design cues in future models soon. Or Mazda could build both, and we’d be happy with that, too.
