Since the very first vehicles with internal combustion engines (ICE) were developed, car-makers have been iterating upon them to make them more practical and more powerful. If this weren’t the case, drivers might still be behind the wheel of Carl Benz’s 0.75 hp Benz Patent Motor Car of the 1880s. SkyActiv-G represents Mazda’s latest efforts to improve its fuel-powered vehicle performance further.
The SkyActiv-G is an ICE that boasts an engine compression of 14.0:1. This isn’t just a super high level, Mazda boasts, but a world first. The company states that it offers 15% more torque and fuel efficiency than its previous engines. As AutoBlog reported in October 2010, the engine model changed its name from the original moniker of Sky-G (G for gas) around that time, and it was also joined by a diesel model, the Sky-D. In the United States, the SkyActiv-G’s ratio is adjusted to 10:1 instead, but the engine remains unique.
Newer vehicles, such as the Mazda CX-30 (2024 model year), utilize a 2.5-liter model of the SkyActiv-G, which can hit around 320 lb-ft of torque and a potent 250 horsepower. Though bigger and more powerful engines can tend to be correspondingly hungrier (routine engine care, again, can help with this), the SkyActiv line aims to incorporate some interesting features to prevent this. Let’s take a look at how the technology works.
