Mazda's penny-pinching path to cleaner cars
How one smaller automaker plans to compete in a high-mileage, low emission world.
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NEW YORK (Fortune) -- When you have lemons, make lemonade.
That is the strategy of Mazda, the smallish Japanese automaker whose products are beloved by enthusiasts but seldom have mass appeal. It is following its own path towards meeting strict 2016 U.S. fuel economy standards of 35 miles per gallon by shunning high-technology solutions in favor of optimizing the conventional mechanics of the automobile.
In football terms, Mazda is using a three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust approach rather than throwing a 60-yard bomb. Its plan sounds sensible. Short of resources, it's depending on hundreds of little improvements rather than plunging into exotic solutions like hydrogen fuel cells or plug-in hybrids.
It is also smart marketing. This gives Mazda an opportunity to brand its solution as something unique. Such niches are hard to come by. With Toyota promoting hybrid gas-electric vehicles like Prius, and Nissan staking a claim to battery-powered electric cars like the 2010 Leaf, Mazda would be consigning itself to permanent also-ran status if it became a fast-follower rather than an innovator.
Hence the "Sustainable Zoom-Zoom" strategy outlined by Mazda North America's product development chief Robert Davis at a speech in New York in mid-November.
He says Mazda can achieve mandated fuel economy savings by improving engines and transmissions and by redesigning vehicles to reduce their weight.
Mazda started on this path after taking a clear-eyed view of the advance of technology, the costs involved, and customer preferences. It believes that even a decade hence, buyers' appetites for hybrids and electrics will be small, and that optimized internal combustion engines -- more economical versions of today's cars, in other words -- will command the vast majority of sales.
Using this incremental approach, Mazda is pledging to improve its gas mileage across the board by an average of 30% by 2015. Among the main items in its playbook are weight reduction, gasoline direct injection, electronic power assisted steering and improved aerodynamics.
Taking pounds out of a car is one of those measures that looks easy but is actually difficult. The potential is huge -- Mazda estimates that savings of three to five miles per gallon are possible. But cars gain weight the way federal budgets acquire deficits -- it is part of the natural order of things. Customers want new technologies, safer construction, and appearance items like larger wheels and tires, so Mazda models gain about 80 pounds every time they are redesigned.
Some solutions to the weight problem that look easy aren't. Davis points out that using exotic materials like carbon-fiber for roofs and hoods works fine for BMW's performance models but it is not realistic for cars that sell at Mazda's price points.
Still he believes Mazda can trim 220 pounds from each model. A lot of the poundage will come out of the chassis, through the use of lighter-weight structural materials and new bonding techniques.
Mazda has other ideas of its sleeve, such as new transmissions that all but eliminate slippage in gear changes and are expected to improve fuel economy by up to 7%.
Added together, they could pay off if the automaker can retain the zoom-zoom feel of, say, the new Mazda3 and not sacrifice the traditional relationship of the driver with the mechanical controls of the car on the altar of new technology.
As they say (and it applies to Mazda as well as all other auto companies trying to get green without exceeding an infinitely-large budget) Necessity is the mother of invention. There is more than one solution to reaching the 35 miles per gallon standard, and until the customers vote, who is to say which one is the best? 
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