Category: Reviews

Last month, our family started a 30 month lease of the new Mazda CX-90 and it’s been an interesting experience after driving a 2020 Tesla Y Long Range for the past 3+ years.

The CX-90 is the PHEV (plug in hybrid) model, in the mid-level (if you can call $55,000 MSRP “mid”) Premium trim. No additional options other than the lovely premium Artisan Red color.

What I like about the CX-90 relative to the Tesla Y:

• We’re about to become a 3 child, 6 person family so we needed a 3 row vehicle. Everyone is much more comfortable in the CX90 – all the passengers love it more. Bigger is better?
• Mazda’s highway cruise control isn’t self driving like Tesla’s but its radar-based speed control is much smoother. It’s quite human or at least very similar to the way I drive in the way it accelerates and decelerates relative to other cars in the same lane. The Tesla Y, even when you put the distance between other cars at its max setting, is quite jerky.
• The CX-90 is significantly quieter than the Y which is significantly quieter than a typical gas car, like a 2013 BMW 3 series.
• My trim has an HUD (heads up display) projected on the windshield – it allows you to see speed, directions and cruise control settings without looking down or to the side (like on a Tesla Y). My biggest gripe, by far, with the Y is not having some centrally focused view for primary driving information.
• The gas + battery combination on the CX-90 supposedly gets 450+ miles. When driving with kids, knowing you can take fewer stops so you can get home by bed time is a pretty big deal. We take trips that require 3-4 hours of driving round trip a couple of times per month – right at the maximum of the Y’s range. This was really stressful and often meant no deviations.

What I don’t like:

• The CX-90 with Captain’s Chair second row is supposedly 7 seats but I think that’s a very hard sell. We have two child seats in the third row and there’s no way we could fit a third. Could you fit three 8 year old kids who don’t need booster seats? Maybe?

• The CX-90 supposedly accelerates pretty well (0-60 in mid 6 seconds) with 320+ HP but I don’t feel it driving in the real world. It could be that I’m too used to the Y and its insane acceleration and smooth power curve, but I don’t feel like I can count on the CX-90 to get me through a 50/50 yellow signal. I don’t really need to drive aggressively, so it’s not that big of a deal, but I never feel that the CX-90 is a powerful car – maybe I should try the sport mode.
• Online reviews of the CX-90 highlight 1) nice driving feel 2) premium interior. For driving, I talked about acceleration already. Relative to the Y, I feel the CX-90 is always understeering. I think it’s because the CX-90 wheel has a much longer turn distance – you have to turn the wheel more. For example, if you try a U turn, you’re turning the CX-90 wheel a lot more than with the Y. This may mean the CX-90 feels more stable than the Y because wheel twitches do less in terms of changing the direction of the car but this also means I’m often underturning. It could very well be that the CX-90 drives better than a Telluride but when I drive the Y after the CX-90, the Y feels like a sports car – acceleration, agility. I don’t consider the CX-90 fun to drive.
• The CX-90’s premium interior – I think it looks better in videos and photos than it is in reality. It’s definitely better than the Y, but is it that much better? I’m not sure if the seating is real leather (the Y has vegan / synthetic) and the paneling looks nice but I suspect is just some type of plastic. Is this worth $5-10K more relative to other cars in its class? Not to me.
• The Mazda app is brutal to use. It’s slow, very unhelpful in sharing the status of the car and limited in functionality. I don’t have any doubt I could produce a better app. If you designed the app in 2010, we’d all be fine with it. But when you have examples like Tesla to learn from, there’s really no excuse.
• The CX-90 can start without the key inserted, but this causes problems because you can leave the car with the key, and the car will keep running. If you don’t come from EVs, maybe this isn’t a big problem, but I am still forgetting to turn off the car. The CX-90 will make a sound if you do this, but if you’re distracted (by kids), you’ll forget and just walk away. There’s no reason why the car shouldn’t turn off on its own, especially if there is no key near the car for a certain amount of time (5 minutes) – it could just turn off and lock itself.
• The hybrid portion of the car supposedly gets 30 miles officially, and 30+ miles unofficially through user comments. I get 20 miles or less. I feel like I have to charge the car every day that I use it even if the day was just for small errands like taking a child to school because it can’t last two days without depleting its battery. I’m not even using the hybrid-prioritized mode (in which I believe the battery is depleted first) in these cases.
• The CX-90’s shift box in which the “top gear” is reverse and not park as it is on most cars can cause problems. It’s hard to understand why this deviation was considered a good idea.

• The driver memory settings for the Premium $55K trim won’t save the side mirror settings. Even Mazda doesn’t seem to know this – I’ve seen this confirmed by other owners, but Mazda sent me their official manual that suggests mirror settings are saved.
• This trim doesn’t include a touch screen. At first, I was ok with this but manipulating the interface with a wheel button while you are driving (remember: no auto drive) is quite…dangerous. Overall, the car user interface of screen and buttons is slightly worse than Tesla’s extreme of no physical buttons.
• The CX-90 trunk size is much smaller because of the third row, and that makes it a less convenient Costco vehicle. Don’t forget the CX-90 doesn’t have extra storage at the bottom of its trunk or a frunk like the Y.

Based on the list of issues, it probably seems like I don’t like the CX-90. I don’t hate it. The CX-90 is getting really nice reviews and I’d sum up those reviews as the poor man’s BMW in terms of a mix of looks, luxury interior and driving dynamics. A big part of why we got it is because there are no good 3 row EV options available right now. I am not the biggest fan of the Tesla Y, but the CX-90 gave me new appreciation for it. The reason I leased the CX-90 is it because it qualifies for the national $7500 EV rebate – you can roll that rebate savings into a 30 month lease but you can’t get that same savings if you buy the CX-90 because it’s made in Japan. I expect there will be better vehicle options with less rampant markup available in 30 months. However, I don’t think the hybrid portion of the car really offers that much. Yeah, if you have a shorter commute, maybe most of the time you’re running as an EV and using little gas. But that’s not the point of a car like this. If I could pick between any version of the CX-90, I’d like to try the gas-only Turbo S version – I suspect that has a smoother, more powerful driving experience.