Mazda Just Teased The Coolest Small Car With A Gimmick So Dumb You’ll Want To Punch A Wall

The small car is seemingly an endangered species. Crossover SUVs dominate much of the world, and even once beloved small car nameplates have become chunky crossovers. It’s a big deal when an automaker comes out with a tiny car concept, and small car fans have something to cheer about. The Mazda Vision X-Compact looks fantastic on the outside (see also: the Vision X Coupe), and on the inside, this new concept car recognizes that enthusiasts don’t like screens – but replaces them with something even worse. More on that in a bit.

Mazda revealed its Vision X-Compact at the Japan Mobility Show yesterday, and car enthusiasts have understandably fallen deeply in love. At only 12.5 feet long, this cutie is only a tad larger than a Japanese Kei car and over a foot shorter than a Mazda 3. Back in the day, as in the 2010s, we used to call these “city cars,” and America used to have such awesome examples as the Honda Fit, the Ford Fiesta, and the Mazda 2. In fact, this concept car is five inches shorter than a U.S. market 2011 Mazda 2. Great!

There’s so much going right for this car, from an adorable application of Mazda’s still sexy design language to its gorgeous Soul Red paint. I even love how Mazda bucked trends and deleted the giant infotainment screens that fill cars. Then it all falls apart because Mazda’s vision for the future of car tech is just ugh. Which I’ll get to, I promise.

Crossover City Car

The Vision X-Compact is a design study, and if you were wondering what the “X” is supposed to mean, well, Mazda says it means “cross.”  So, this is supposed to be a bit of a crossover city car. It does sort of have the proportions of a crossover, and I do like the idea of pumping some crossover traits into a city car. It’s nice to have a high-riding seat in a runabout! “Is it an EV, PHEV, or ICE?” Mazda doesn’t say.

No matter what might power it, I am in absolute love with this design. I adore it so much that, if Mazda had announced the Vision X-Compact as a production car available with a manual transmission, I’d be seriously considering buying my first new car purchase in nearly a decade. The Vision X-Compact is a continuation of Mazda’s brilliant and timeless Kodo “Soul of Motion” design language. For more than a decade, Mazdas have largely avoided the sharp creases and jagged edges of their competitors and instead featured smooth, flowing lines.

Something I love about Mazda’s Kodo design philosophy is how it plays with paint. A Kodo Mazda in Soul Red has such beautiful depth that you don’t really see with any other car on the road in Mazda’s price brackets. It’s also awesome that Mazdas still largely look kind and happy in a world where angry grilles come from the factory with almost everyone else.

This is a properly small car, too. Its wheelbase is only 99 inches, which is about eight inches shorter than a Mazda 3’s wheelbase and only an inch longer than the old Mazda 2’s. I’m also a sucker for the glass roof and Volvo-like taillights. I have no notes and no real complaints about the design.

The interior also has a lot going for it, too. Look at that, Mazda deleted the entire infotainment system! That’s great! I can forgive the car for not having any buttons or visible controls. It is a design study, after all, not a prototype.

That said, I do wish that designers did something a bit more exciting inside than a flat, entirely featureless dashboard. Somehow, the interior design of the X-Compact is so simplistic that a Tesla Model 3’s interior looks busy in comparison. I think the lack of a giant tablet should have been an excuse to make something striking.

The only screens in this cockpit are the tiny instrument cluster and your phone, which would sit right next to the instrument cluster. Alright, so how would this car work without buttons or screens? I’m sorry you asked.

Wait, What?

Let’s just jump right into it with Mazda’s blurb about the car:

The MAZDA VISION X-COMPACT is a model designed to deepen the bond between people and cars through the fusion of a human sensory digital model and empathetic AI. Acting like a close companion, it is capable of engaging in natural conversation and suggesting destinations, helping expand the driver’s world. This represents Mazda’s vision for the future of smart mobility, where vehicles and people form an emotional connection, much like a friend.

Mazda says elsewhere that the AI is supposed to help drivers form a “heartfelt relationship” with their car. Mazda designer Kaisei Takahashi clarified what this means, and it’s something, from Autoblog:

“Picture this: you are behind the wheel, but you are not alone. There is a warm presence, not intrusive, just aware. It might say, ‘Hey, remember that cafe you mentioned last week? There is a fun back road that will get us there. Way more interesting than this highway.’”

“In the future, a Mazda vehicle will be a companion that makes every journey richer. Like spending time with a friend, it will invite dimension, variety, satisfaction, and a feeling of being understood.”

Apparently, the AI is also programmed to give you words of encouragement like “Ooh, nice merge!” or “Blind spot, left side.”

We are living in an era where the buzzword “AI” cannot be avoided anymore. AI is everywhere, from your email client to once-simple tools like schedulers and reminders. There are AIs to write blog posts, there are AIs to research any topic, there are AI girlfriends, and, of course, there’s AI “art.” It’s everywhere, and as we have written now numerous times in the past, AI has gone from being a genuinely useful tool to reduce busywork to stealing the work of artists and pumping out misinformation and disinformation at an alarming rate. You can’t even use AI for anything informative or educational since it’s just going to lie to you most of the time.

But I get why AI is bleeding into cars. People use AI every day, and Chinese car buyers are loving their car AIs, so here we are. I admit, maybe I’m a bit of that person yelling at a cloud meme.

Mazda, you had me in the first half. This concept car is undeniably gorgeous, and a really small car would be so fun. But I don’t want any of those AI gimmicks in my next car. I don’t need my car to be my girlfriend or boyfriend. I don’t want an Internet-connected car watching me and listening to me. I don’t want an AI to attempt and fail to give me a good driving route. Finding great roads yourself is one of the great parts about driving!

So Close, Mazda

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the deletion of the big central tablet, but I’d take a giant tablet over AI any day, any time.

Sadly, and thankfully, this is only a design study, and Mazda is not going to put an AI boyfriend into your car just yet. Though Mazda does say this is its vision for the future. I’m going to hope that the future is very far out. I suppose the car is sort of unrealistic, anyway. If small cars were a hot market, beloved nameplates like the Honda Fit would still be around.

Still, if Mazda kicked the AI buzzwords to the curb and put this into production, I think I’d be one of the dozen or so people who would buy the X-Compact. It’s just so cute and so awesome. Keep up the great design work, Mazda.