The IT Nerd

Mazda made a lot of changes when it comes to the technology in the 2016 Mazda6 GT. I’ll highlight what’s new and what’s back for 2016:

Let’s start with actually driving the car. The GT trim level gives you a proximity key with push button start. Thus all you have to do is press a button on the driver’s door handle. Press it and the car will unlock. Get in, hit the start/stop button and drive away. One nice touch is that the start/stop button will light up with a green light if you press the brake pedal to start. That’s a nice touch to remind you to press the brake pedal to start the car. When you’ve reached your destination, press the start/stop button to turn off the car. Then get out of the car, close the door and walk away. You’ll hear two beeps. One after you close the door and one about 10 seconds later. When you hear both, the car is locked. You never need to pull out the key fob to do any of this. But the key fob does have the ability to lock and unlock the doors as well as pop the trunk, plus it has the ever useful panic button. As an added bonus, it has a backup key inside the key fob should you need it.

Now onto the safety features. This Mazda6 GT comes with a lot of safety features:

• Blind Spot Monitoring: This system keeps an eye out for cars in your blind spots so that you don’t hit them when changing lanes. It works well as the area of detection was large enough to keep me safe, but not so large that it created false positives.
• Smart City Brake Support: Let’s say that you you do not react in time to a car that panic stops in front of you. This Mazda is capable of coming to a stop at low speeds, or slowing down to make the impact less severe. You can get more details on this system here.
• Smart Brake Support: This is new for 2016. Smart Brake Support is capable of detecting vehicles and obstacles as far as 200 m ahead. When a risk of collision is detected, the system slows the car via a two-stage brake operation. This systems aims to help the driver avoid or reduce the severity of collisions, particularly when driving at mid-to high speeds (between 15 km/h and 145 km/h), by automatically applying the brake if there is a danger of collision.
• Adaptive Front Lighting System: I wrote about this previously and I have to admit that on some of the back roads that I drive at night, this feature comes in handy. I was always able to see what was in front of me clearly. I should also note that this trim level comes with Bi-Xenon HID headlights as well The lighting can be set to automatic so that you never have to worry about turning the lights on and off. I found that the levels where the lights might turn on to be better than most cars that I’ve driven as on a dark overcast day, the lights would come on in this Mazda. That’s something that would not happen in a lot of cars in similar systems.
• Lane Departure Warning System: If you cross over into another lane, this system will buzz you on either the right or the left side. The buzz really gets your attention I must say.
• Radar Cruise Control: This system allows the car to monitor what the vehicle in front if it is doing, and adjust it’s speed accordingly. It works and works very well. I consider this to be a safety feature as it lessens the burden being on long drives.
• Rear Cross Traffic Alert: If you back out of a parking space in a busy shopping mall and you have limited visibility to your left and right, you’ll love this system as you will be warned of any cars that cross into your path.
• Adaptive Front Lighting System and High Beam Control: I wrote about this previously and I have to admit that on some of the back roads that I drive at night, this feature comes in handy. I was always able to see what was in front of me clearly. I should also note that this trim level comes with Bi-Xenon HID headlights with LED daytime running lights that look cool. The lighting can be set to automatic so that you never have to worry about turning the lights on and off. I found that the levels where the lights might turn on to be better than most cars that I’ve driven as on a dark overcast day, the lights would come on. That’s something that would not happen in a lot of cars in similar systems.
• You get anti-lock brakes, traction control, stability control, and electronic brake force distribution.
• Finally, you get dual front air bags, dual front side air bags and dual side air curtains.

There’s also this:

Meet the Mazda Active Driving Display. Hit the ignition button and the Active Driving Display screen pivots up from its place in the dash. It provides drivers with real-time driving information. This includes vehicle speed; chosen cruise-control speed; information from the navigation system (including turn-by-turn directions, distance and lane guidance); as well as the operational status of the Mazda’s active safety systems such as Smart City Brake Support. All within the line of sight of the driver. Once I tweaked my seat position as well as the position of the screen, I found it to be extremely useful.

Back for 2016 is Mazda’s i-Eloop regenerative braking system that helps you to save gas by capturing and storing energy that is normally lost during braking in a capacitor. Then it takes that energy and uses it to run the electronics in the car so the engine doesn’t have to. The finer details on i-Eloop can be found here. But it works given that I am sipping gas at the moment. Another key point. A lot of these regenerative braking systems make the brake pedal feel radically different than what most people are used to. This one does not feel any different and you would never know that a system like this was installed if you didn’t check the spec sheet.

The biggest change for 2016 is the inclusion of Mazda Connect. When I reviewed the 2015 model, I found the infotainment system in that one to be adequate. Mazda Connect however is superior to what was included in the 2015 model. The combination of the 7″ touchscreen (up from 5.8″) and the HMI (Human Machine Interface) Commander Switch gives the driver a easy to learn, easy to use infotainment system that I consider to be the gold standard in the automotive industry. I wrote about it in detail here, but take it from me, Mazda Connect is a winner from every aspect. Multimedia, navigation, even tweaking how the car is set up. There’s currently nothing better out there in the marketplace at the moment as far as I am concerned.

The Mazda6 has an 11 speaker Bose sound system that I have to admit that regardless where I was in the Mazda, the sound was excellent as the highs and lows were perfect and the audio was well balanced. Phone calls were clear on both ends of the conversation as well. For those of you who still use CDs, there’s a CD drive as well.

Now the touchscreen also doubles as the screen for the backup camera. It was easy to manoeuvre into a space as its field of vision was very good. Though I will note that the actual camera is exposed to the elements. Thus I have to wonder what the video quality would be like if the Mazda gets really dirty. Another observation, other than cross traffic alerts, there’s no option for backup sensors to warn you of objects that you might hit while reversing in the Mazda6 GT.

The Mazda6 GT has a lot of technology packed into it. It can stop itself if you don’t react in time, it has great audio and a good infotainment system. It’s going to appeal to many who look at it.

The final part of this review will tie up some loose ends and I’ll give you my final verdict. Watch for it on Friday.

This entry was posted on April 2, 2015 at 7:04 am and is filed under Products with tags Mazda. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.