Mazda makes cost-saving effort as inflation threatens to drive up investment spending

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese automaker Mazda Motor said on Tuesday it will keep investments in its electrification efforts in check by making use of partnerships and its existing manufacturing plants after inflation threatened to push up costs.

The automaker said it expects to keep its investment at around 1.5 trillion yen ($10.02 billion) for the period up to 2030 through its efforts, just as much as it had said in November 2022 it would be investing.

Without its cost-savings efforts, spending on investment for the period was likely to surge by a third compared to what the company expected initially to around 2 trillion yen due to inflation, Mazda said.

As part of its "lean asset" strategy it unveiled on Tuesday, Mazda planned to produce an electric vehicle that it will launch in 2027 on an existing production line on which it already makes cars powered by internal combustion engines.

By using an existing line instead of building a dedicated EV plant, the company would keep down the required investment amount by about 85% and cut the production lead time by around 80% for the vehicle.

Mazda already has a number of partnerships in various areas, such as with much bigger peer Toyota Motor on the development of electronic architecture, and Denso, one of the world's biggest automotive suppliers.

Mazda will need to further step up its collaboration with companies in the automotive industry if it wants to retain its international competitiveness as a Japanese automaker, CEO Masahiro Moro told reporters.

Toyota owns a 5.1% stake in the automaker.

($1 = 149.6500 yen)

(Reporting by Daniel Leussink; Editing by Kim Coghill)