Mazda Motor Corporation’s Board of Directors have announced a myriad of internal personnel changes today, the most prominent being current Representative Director President and CEO Akira Marumoto stepping down into a role as a senior advisor to make way for Masahiro Moro – a veteran of Mazda for 40 years.
Mazda Motor Corporation is a Japanese automaker with over a century’s experience in autos. Despite its roots, 86% of Mazda’s sales come from outside of Japan and 36% come from North America alone. A large reason for the automaker’s success on this continent has been through the efforts of Masahiro Moro, who first joined in 1983 when Mazda was still going by Toyo Kogyo Co.
Moro ran Mazda in Europe from 2004 to 2008 and became president and CEO of Mazda Motor of America in 2016. During that tenure, Moro helped reform Mazda’s US dealer network and rebuild its profitability in the region.
As Mazda looks to transition a segment of its vehicles to electric powertrains by the end of the decade, Masahiro Moro is inheriting a tough role as CEO as sales have dipped and EV development has been less than ideal, but he has already shared a two-fold plan.
Left: Incoming Mazda CEO Masahiro Moro, Right: Current CEO Akira Marumoto / Credit: Mazda
New Mazda CEO to prioritize larger vehicles, US sales
Mazda shared the full list of proposed personnel changes in a release today, which also includes current head of Mazda North America Jeffrey Guyton becoming the automaker’s global finance chief and a member of the parent company’s board.
After current Mazda CEO Akira Marumoto introduced his replacement to the media, Moro spoke about his two priorities looking forward:
We want to bring fresh eyes to the company. One is to successfully roll out large products, which will be a major growth driver for putting the company on a growth trajectory.
The second is to implement company-wide cost reduction activities, including all supply chains and value chains, in order to further improve management efficiency going forward, so as to make our overall business more robust.
With Moro as Mazda’s new CEO, there will be a keener focus on the North American market, particularly the US, where larger SUVs and crossovers sell well. Mazda will look to electrify those options moving forward with hopes to regain some market share and reach its 2030 target of 25-40% of global sales being all-electric. Dream big, guys.
Last November, Mazda announced an $11 billion investment in electrification on top of pre-existing plans to make all of its production facilities carbon neutral by 2035. Combustion vehicles still contribute to 99.9% of Mazda’s sales, however, so it better get a move on.
The automaker states the aforementioned investment could enable EV production on US soil as early as 2026-2027, meaning those particular EVs may qualify for federal tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act.
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Oil prices edged down on Tuesday after surging nearly 2% in the previous session, as traders kept a close watch on developments in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Anton Petrus | Moment | Getty Images
Oil prices gained ground on Tuesday, as Ukraine war escalations raised questions over the resilience of Russian supplies, while uncertainty lingers over the impact of Washington’s policies on key oil consumers.
Brent futures with November expiry were at $69.46 per barrel at 10:54 a.m. London time ( 5:54 a.m. E.T.), up 1.92% from the Monday close.
The front-month October Nymex WTI contract was trading at $65.97 per barrel, higher by 3.06%. WTI futures did not settle on Monday because of the U.S. Labor holiday.
Russia supply
Moscow and Kyiv have ramped up fire exchanges in their three-and-a-half-year conflict, with Reuters calculations pointing to Ukrainian drone attacks shutting down facilities accounting for at least 17% of Russia’s oil processing capacity. CNBC could not independently verify the report.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed “new deep strikes” against Russia in a social media post over the weekend, without disclosing details. His pledge comes amid stalling U.S. and European efforts to draw Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin into conceding to bilateral ceasefire talks with his Ukrainian counterpart.
The White House has separately piled on indirect pressure on Russia’s oil consumers, implementing additional levies on imports of Indian goods it attributed to New Delhi’s ongoing purchases of Moscow’s crude. India has criticized the impositions as “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable.”
In a further sign of deteriorating relations, U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday doubled down on lambasting Washington’s trade ties with India as a “totally one sided disaster.”
Critically, Washington has yet to move against China, the world’s largest crude importer and Russia’s biggest oil buyer since the introduction of G7 sanctions. Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met at this week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, in a show of Global South unity.
OPEC+
Also on the supply side, oil investors are looking out for output policy signals from an eight-member subset of the OPEC+ alliance – comprising heavyweights Russia and Saudi Arabia, alongside Algeria, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Oman and the United Arab Emirates – which are due to deliberate potential production steps on Sept. 7. The group, which recently expedited unwinding a 2.2-million-barrels-per-day production cut, is widely seen as unlikely to change course on strategy this week.
“We believe, just like the broader market, that the group will leave production levels unchanged for October,” ING analysts said Tuesday. “The scale of the surplus through next year means it’s unlikely the group will bring additional supply onto the market. The bigger risk is OPEC+ deciding to reinstate supply cuts, given concerns about a surplus.”
U.S. rates
Market participants are likewise following this week’s release of the U.S. August job report, expected to be factored into the U.S. Federal Reserve’s monetary policy meeting of Sept. 16-17. The Fed is currently widely expected to lower interest rates at the time, in a move that could echo into a softer greenback and push up demand for U.S.-denominated commodities, such as oil.
BMW Motorrad just dropped a futuristic electric motorcycle concept that looks like it rolled straight out of a sci-fi movie and into a design studio. The new concept, called the BMW Motorrad Vision CE, is the company’s latest attempt to answer a question that’s been bouncing around for a while now: What should an electric BMW motorcycle actually look like?
Apparently, the answer is: not like anything else on the road.
Where traditional cruisers are low-slung and heavy with chrome, BMW’s new electric concept is lean, sharp, and unapologetically modern. The design team says it blends “emotional tech” with urban performance, which sounds like marketing fluff to me. But what we’re really looking at here is a sleek mashup of café racer attitude, cyberpunk energy, and hidden electric performance.
A structural canopy and a four-point harness work together to provide enclosed protection, meaning riders won’t necessarily need a helmet like on a traditional motorcycle – though eye protection is still a must.
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The CE 04-based concept bike still keeps some familiar lines, like a long, low silhouette and exposed mechanical elements, but everything else is turned up to eleven. LED lighting slashes through the front end. A massive disc-style rim dominates the rear. The bodywork floats above the drivetrain. And the whole bike looks like it could transform into a drone if you pressed the right button.
Under the hood – well, under the body panels – BMW hasn’t revealed exact specs yet, but the CE-04 platform this is based on was already pushing 31 kW (42 hp) and a top speed of 120 km/h (75 mph), making it ideal for urban riding and modest highway hops.
BMW says the Motorrad Vision CE is more than just a design exercise. It’s a glimpse at how the brand plans to evolve its iconic Motorrad DNA into the electric age. And while the bike is just a concept for now, it wouldn’t be the first time BMW took something wild off the show stand and eventually turned it into a production machine. (Remember the original CE 04 concept? Yeah, that’s a real bike you can overpay for and ride right now.) And of course, how could we not mention the original BMW C1 that adopted a similar helmet-free semi-enclosed cage design 25 years ago?
BMW has already made it clear that it sees electric mobility as the future of urban riding, and with the CE lineup forming the core of that push, we might not have to wait too long to see something like this actually hit the streets.
So if you’ve been waiting for a proper electric motorcycle that doesn’t just replace the engine but reimagines the whole experience to feel less biker-like, BMW’s latest concept might just be a glimpse at what’s coming next, reimagining the past with a focus on the future.
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Stark Future, the Spanish electric motorcycle maker that turned the off-road world on its head, just locked in a fresh round of funding, pushing its total capital raised past €100 million. And unlike the big, flashy VC rounds we usually see, this one came mostly from existing backers and a few hand-picked newcomers, including some heavy hitters from the MotoGP world.
In what has become classic Stark style, the round was closed quickly and quietly, underscoring just how confident investors are in the brand’s growth trajectory. CEO and founder Anton Wass says the company intentionally offered a “very attractive valuation” to those who already believed in the mission.
“We managed to close it within a couple of weeks,” said Wass. “It’s a strong testament to the results our team has created.”
And it’s not just hype. Stark has proven it can build bikes that not only compete with gas-powered motocross machines, but completely outclass them. Their flagship model, the all-electric Stark VARG, claims the title of most powerful motocross bike ever made. Riders have already racked up tens of millions of kilometers on the VARG, and the bike has helped convert thousands of motocross enthusiasts to battery power. The model even got e-motos banned from the X-Games when the organizers feared that gas-powered bikes couldn’t keep up.
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That kind of traction, paired with the company’s rapid expansion into over 70 countries, explains why investors are still lining up to get a piece of the action.
But what really makes Stark stand out in the electric motorcycle world is its quick path to profitability. That’s a rare word in the electric motorcycle space, especially for such a young company. Just two years after their first deliveries, and within six years of founding, Stark Future is profitable and thriving. With each passing year, they seem to be improving margins, growing revenues, and launching new platforms.
And speaking of new platforms, those are coming, too. The company teased “very exciting new products” on the way, though didn’t drop specifics just yet. From the rumor mill though, it sounds like the company is preparing street models that could give gas bikes a run for their money. And if they’re anything like the VARG, we can certainly expect bikes that push boundaries and continue proving Wass’s bold thesis: electric motorcycles can outperform internal combustion in just about every way.
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