A new alliance arrives: Toyota, Mazda and Subaru strengthen combustion engines

We are living in an era in which we are seeing more and more alliances and agreements between brands that want to boost the automotive industry. It is not new, of course. There have always been companies that have joined forces to advance the joint manufacturing of their models, but the arrival of new industrial challenges has made these partnerships more frequent. We already saw how the union between Honda and Nissan failed, with Mitsubishi as the third brand in the failed deal.

But now a new alliance between three Japanese companies arrives, aiming to work together so that the combustion engine remains the protagonist of cars for longer than expected. Toyota, Mazda and Subaru are working together to improve combustion engines, but using alternative fuels to do so.

These alternative fuels are biofuels, synthetic fuel and hydrogen. This is important, because developing these engines powered by fuels different from those we know today will allow them to remain important in the automotive industry despite the growing electrification.

Each brand has specialized in a different strategy that complements those of the others. Toyota will be in charge of developing two new, more compact four-cylinder engines. The first will be a 1.5-litre that is expected to offer a 12% fuel saving and will be 10% smaller than a similar engine currently on the market.

The other engine will be a 2.0-litre, which will occupy 30% less space and offer efficiency similar to that of a 2.5-litre engine. For its part, Mazda will contribute its experience with rotary engines. It will develop innovative one- or two-rotor solutions for range extenders for electric vehicles.

As for Subaru, it will dedicate itself to developing a Boxer engine. In fact, it is already working on a prototype of the Crosstek model that it wants to use to show the efficiency of the Boxer engine with a hybrid drivetrain.

Overall, the aim is to work together to offer a greater variety of engines that pursue carbon neutrality. The collaboration wants to demonstrate that pragmatic sustainability can be achieved with combustion engines, at a time when it seems that innovation only focuses on electric engines.