Say hello to the battery-powered Mazda 6e liftback, the Japanese manufacturer’s long-overdue return to the electric vehicle (EV) market.
It’s been more than two years years since the brand’s first attempt at a mass-produced EV, the MX-30 small electric SUV, was discontinued in Australia. But what you see here is a much more advanced and, to be frank, compelling effort at producing a global EV that can compete with its now well-established rivals.
First time around, Mazda tackled the challenge of developing an EV alone, designing and building the MX-30 in Japan.
This time, Mazda has teamed up with its Chinese affiliate to bring this new-generation EV to life. The Mazda 6e is the first model produced in partnership with Changan Automobiles, a company which built its first car in 1959 and which Mazda has a 20-year working relationship with.
However, don’t think for a moment that the Mazda 6e is just some rebadged Chinese car from another manufacturer you’ve never heard of. Mazda was involved in the development of the 6e’s platform from the outset.
While Changan has taken care of battery development and much of the 6e’s cabin hardware and technology, Mazda developed its own exterior and interior, shaped the operating system and, most importantly, tuned the suspension and steering specifically for European and Western markets like Australia and New Zealand.
The Changan Mazda partnership allows the Japanese automaker to leverage Chinese expertise in battery and EV production, freeing up Mazda to stick to its strong suits: ride and handling characteristics, and interior and exterior design.
On paper, the 6e (and its upcoming sister model, the CX-6e SUV) should be the best of both worlds – state-of-the-art Chinese EV production and battery tech, and Mazda’s reputation for making cars that are actually fun to drive.
We headed out on the narrow city streets, 120km/h motorways and twisting hills in and around Barcelona, Spain, to find out if that’s the case with the spiritual successor the long-lamented Mazda 6.
How much does the Mazda 6e cost?
In Australia there will be two variants of this all-new mid-size electric liftback – the 6e E35 GT priced from under $50,000 and the 6e E35 Atenza priced from under $53,000.
Model | Price before on-road costs |
|---|---|
2026 Mazda 6e E35 GT | $49,990 |
2026 Mazda 6e E35 Atenza | $52,990 |
Each variant is differentiated only by interior materials, and each variant is priced below the 6e’s most direct competitor, the top-selling Tesla Model 3 (from $54,900 plus ORCs), but not the BYD Seal, which is priced from $49,888 plus ORCs and is also available in three grades.
To see how the Mazda 6e lines up against the competition, check out our comparison tool
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What’s the Mazda 6e like inside?
Unlike any Mazda we’ve seen yet.
Granted, the materials and visual design are unmistakably Mazda. The seats are very comfortable, the leather they’re wrapped in feels premium, and there’s even suede on the top of the door cards. Mazda has a knack of making its interiors feel more premium than their price points, and the 6e is no different.
But do anything beyond sitting in it is a different story.
The partnership between Changan and Mazda is most heavily weighted towards China when it comes to the touchscreen-heavy controls. Everything apart from the windows, hazard lights, gear selector (mounted behind the wheel), adaptive cruise on/off and indicators is controlled by the central 14.6-inch touchscreen display.
Want to adjust the wipers? Touchscreen. Adjust the side mirrors? Touchscreen. Change to a radio station that isn’t preset? Yep, touchscreen. It sounds crazy, yet in practice it works better than you’d think.
There’s a dedicated menu running along the bottom of the screen that’s always there, allowing you to quickly adjust cabin temperature, turn the heated seats on, control fan speed, or access the drive menus. Once I learned where everything is, I got used to it much more quickly than anticipated.
Those wipers and mirror controls are easily accessed and, when you think about it, they’re items most drivers normally set and forget. The wipers live in auto mode, but you might have to do a quick tutorial to explain the mirror controls when you lend your 6e to a mate.
The menu running along the bottom is also customisable, as are two ‘Favourite’ shortcut buttons on the steering wheel, which you can preset to access the menus or modes you use regularly. It also helps that the screen is high-definition and very responsive to react when touched. It’s powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip that’s faster than some people’s smartphones, and I wouldn’t want it any slower with this kind of touch-centric control layout.
Speaking of screens, the driver’s 10.25-inch instrument cluster is also fully digital and all 6e vehicles have a head-up display that dwarfs the driver’s cluster and can be adjusted via the… yeah, touchscreen.
This could be a lot for some customers to deal with, but it has to be said that the feedback and direction given to Changan Mazda by their colleagues at Mazda Japan and Europe have made this one of the easiest touchscreen system I’ve ever used in a Chinese-made EV. The fact I could use it fluently on the move in less than a day is something I didn’t expect in a left-hand drive car.
But that’s enough screen chat. There’s more to this cabin than pixels. As I said earlier, the seats are comfortable though the driving position in the 6e is a little higher than I expected. The driver’s seat is power-adjustable, as is the front passenger’s, and headroom isn’t an issue. But I’d like it to drop into the chassis a bit more. Maybe that’s a hint at how this liftback is tuned – comfort over performance.
Below the screen is a wireless phone charger and there’s storage space between the front occupants with USB-C outlets. The central armrest is also wrapped in leather and opens to reveal another large storage bin.
Our tester was also fitted with a 14-speaker Sony sound system, which sounded great playing Kiwi rock while I was driving on the other side of the planet.
In the back row, there’s plenty of space for at least full-size adults. Despite being a liftback with a sloping rear roofline, shoulder and knee room is plenty for anyone under six-foot-four-ish. Because it’s an EV, the rear floor is flat but a hump in the middle seat base means two-wide is the best option for adult travel.
Rear-seat occupants get to enjoy the panoramic glass roof, while the tailgate is power-operated and reveals 466 litres of total boot space. Combine that with the 72L frunk up front and the 6e pips the last Mazda 6 sedan’s boot capacity of 477L.
Dimensions | Mazda 6e |
|---|---|
Length | 4921mm |
Width | 1890mm (excl. mirrors) |
Height | 1485mm |
Wheelbase | 2895mm |
Cargo capacity | 337L (to belt line, incl. under-floor storage) |
To see how the Mazda 6e lines up against the competition, check out our comparison tool
What’s under the bonnet?
A decent-sized frunk that’s big enough for your charging cable, two boxes of wine, and two full shopping bags. I was in Europe, where boxes of wine are a unit of measurement, okay?
Specifications | Mazda 6e |
|---|---|
Drivetrain | Single electric motor |
Battery | 78kWh lithium iron phosphate |
Power | 190kW |
Torque | 290Nm |
Drive type | Rear-wheel drive |
0-100km/h (tested; prototype) | 7.35 seconds |
Energy consumption (claimed) | 15.9kWh/100km |
Claimed range | 560km (WLTP) |
Max DC charge rate | 195kW |
Braked towing capacity | 1500kg |
Kerb weight | 2090kg |
However, under that you won’t find any electric motors. The 6e is Mazda’s first all-new rear-wheel drive model since the RX-8 and there are currently no plans for an all-wheel drive version.
Our test car was European-spec with an 80kWh LFP battery and a single electric motor at the rear axle delivering 180kW of power and 320Nm of torque. Claimed 0-100km/h acceleration is 7.9 seconds and top speed is 175km/h.
As you can see in the table above, Australian-spec vehicles will have a slightly different battery and motor, and we’ve already found they’ll be slightly quicker.
The LFP battery is capable of DC fast-charging at up to 195kW, when Mazda says a 30-80 per cent charge is possible in as little as 15 minutes.
To see how the Mazda 6e lines up against the competition, check out our comparison tool
What’s the Mazda 6e like to drive?
I have to admit, I was a bit worried about this part. I read and watched Paul’s review of a pre-production 6e ahead of time and was concerned I’d find the 6e a bit soft as well.
That didn’t turn out to be the case. On the move the 6e feels like… well, a rear-wheel drive, electric Mazda 6. In my book, that’s no bad thing.
I do get where Paul is coming from, though. Around town and at slower speeds the Mazda 6e absorbs bumps and uneven surfaces really well. None of the potholes in Barcelona concerned the Mazda under 60km/h. Props to the Mazda Europe engineers, who tuned the suspension for 6e vehicles coming to Australia and New Zealand – they certainly know what they’re doing.
Where my experience differed from Paul’s was when I gained speed. You can travel anywhere from 90 to 120km/h on the motorways of Barcelona and, if anything, the 6e I drove on them felt better at these speeds. The car feels light at the wheel and yet it never felt floaty at speed, where noise and vibration inside the cabin was also minimal and among the best I’ve experienced in the electric sedan segment.
The 6e has three drive modes – Normal, Sport and Individual. In the latter you can turn up the regenerative braking to its highest setting, but even then I found it wasn’t quite forceful enough to be a genuine one-pedal drive mode, requiring a light touch of the brake to bring it to a stop. ‘Normal’ gives you a balance between range/efficiency and performance, and applies standard steering weight and regenerative braking force.
‘Sport’ is what I really wanted to try out and I did so on the twisting rural roads around Barcelona. In this mode the 6e reduces the steering assistance, increases the regenerative braking and allows you to deploy as much energy as the system can muster.
Again, the driving position feels a bit too high for a low-slung liftback, but it did help me place the car more easily on the wrong side of the road in unfamiliar territory.
Regardless, the chassis responded well to spirited driving in the twisties and the 6e’s road manners remained well-sorted on some very narrow and undulating backroads. The 6e I drove weighed just over two tonnes, yet the suspension and brakes had no issues dealing with all that mass.
It was genuinely enjoyable to drive on a challenging road, and never felt like a handful that would get away from me. That’s probably in part because of the 6e’s straight-line performance, or lack tthereof.
With 180kW, 320Nm and a 7.9-second 0-100km/h claim in Euro spec, this isn’t an EV that violently forces you back into the seat or scares the life out of your passengers. It also means it’s not really an EV that you can steer from the rear axle. It will slide, for sure, but it won’t lay down black lines or over-rotate on you.
We’ve become numb to some bonkers 0-100km/h times in the EV space, but after 400km of driving I found that’s not what the 6e is all about. It’s much too refined for that. Where the 6e really shines is as a comfortable daily commuter or highway cruiser.
It does have a handy 11.6-metre turning circle, which is identical to the Tesla Model 3. But any Model 3, including the entry-level single-motor RWD, will leave it behind under acceleration.
That won’t matter to everyone, because some people are more economically minded than others. And they should be happy to hear that after 400km of highway, city and spirited backroad driving, I actually bettered the 6e’s WLTP energy consumption figure of 15.9kWh/100km, finishing my time with the Mazda at 15.6kWh/100km.
To see how the Mazda 6e lines up against the competition, check out our comparison tool
What do you get?
There are two trim levels in the Mazda 6e lineup.
2026 Mazda 6e GT equipment highlights:
- 19-inch alloy wheels
- Automatic LED headlights
- Panoramic sunroof
- Heated, power-folding exterior mirrors with memory
- Power tailgate
- Rain-sensing wipers
- Keyless entry and start
- Bluetooth key
- Augmented reality head-up display
- 10.25-inch digital instrument cluster
- 14.6-inch touchscreen infotainment system
- Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto
- DAB+ digital radio
- Tri-zone climate control
- Leatherette-wrapped steering wheel
- Leatherette upholstery
- Heated and ventilated front seats
- 10-way power driver’s seat
- 4-way power passenger seat
- 64-colour ambient lighting
- 14-speaker Sony sound system
The Atenza adds:
- Tan leather and synthetic suede seat trim with quilted stitching
- Tan synthetic suede trim on the dashboard and doors
- Two-tone black and leather steering wheel
To see how the Mazda 6e lines up against the competition, check out our comparison tool
Is the Mazda 6e safe?
The Mazda 6e has yet to be assessed by independent safety authority ANCAP, though its European counterpart Euro NCAP awarded the EV with a five-star rating in 2025.
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It received an adult occupant protection rating of 93 per cent, a child occupant protection rating of 93 per cent, a vulnerable road user protection rating of 74 per cent, and a safety assist rating of 77 per cent.
Standard safety equipment includes:
- Adaptive cruise control with stop/go
- Autonomous emergency braking (AEB)
- Junction assist
- Pedestrian and cyclist detection
- Reverse AEB
- Blind-spot monitoring
- Cruising & Traffic Support
- Driver monitoring system
- Front and rear cross-traffic alert
- Lane-keep assist
- Safe exit warning
- Traffic sign recognition
- Surround-view camera with see-through view
- Front and rear parking sensors
- 9 airbags
To see how the Mazda 6e lines up against the competition, check out our comparison tool
How much does the Mazda 6e cost to run?
Mazda Australia backs its vehicles with a five-year, unlimited-kilometre warranty.
It hasn’t confirmed service pricing or battery warranty coverage for the Mazda 6e as yet.
To see how the Mazda 6e lines up against the competition, check out our comparison tool
CarExpert’s take on the Mazda 6e
Our first taste of the Mazda 6e was promising.
We’ve waited some time for Mazda to re-enter the EV space and a lot has changed in the market since its last effort, but it looks like the 6e will be worth the wait.
While I found the ride and handling to be much-improved since Paul’s pre-production drive experience, it’s worth noting that the 6e is no sports sedan.
However, that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun to drive.
Some EVs throw performance at you, seemingly in the hope that you’ll miss their iffy interior fitment, unresolved suspension, or orange-peel paint.
Mazda has gone about the 6e in a different way. It could have made it faster if it wanted – of that I have no doubt.
What it has done instead is create an everyday family car that’s fun to drive and efficient while doing so. It’s personality is friendly and inviting, like an old friend with nothing to prove.
And then there’s the looks – both the Mazda 6e’s and the ones it attracted in Barcelona. The Spanish noticed this car. Whether it was in a rural town or the city, people stopped to stare at the 6e and, when they did, they smiled.
Yes, the Mazda is a pleasing sort of car – and not just to drive.
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