Colorado Car Guide: Mazda’s G-Vectoring Technology is Eight Years of Handling Precision in the Making

Mazda’s market share is fairly small, but its employees’ zeal might be second to none in the automotive industry. Many of those employees have a habit, for example, of working on weekends to help improve Mazda’s products, as was the case with the company’s latest safety technology, G-Vectoring.

Daisuke Umetsu, Mazda’s senior engineer for vehicle dynamics, and two other Mazda engineers conceived the project eight years ago and have been working slowly to implement it. They hit a snag early in the development, and only recently have they made the technology work to their liking.

Mazda engineers’ initial explanation of G-Vectoring seems complicated, but ultimately it’s not difficult to understand. When a car’s onboard computer detects steering input, it signals the engine to cut torque by retarding the engine’s timing to variable degrees based on the severity (or lack thereof) of the steering input. This momentary, 300-millisecond cut in power causes the car’s nose to dive imperceptibly. The nosedive likely goes unnoticed by the driver, but it puts more weight on the front tires. thereby giving them more traction. Call it the automated version of a technique long used by race-car drivers.

What took so long to implement the idea? The computing speed of Mazda’s electronics was too slow to perform the operation with the almost instantaneous reaction required for it to work. Mazda’s engineers needed lightning-fast processors to reduce the amount of “minimum jerk”—think of the g force you experience when a car corners and your head whips to either side—to ensure balance and comfort and to make that “jerk” almost imperceptible to a car’s passengers.

Now, though, the computers are fast enough. We sampled G-Vectoring installed on a front-wheel-drive Mazda6, on both dry and slick surfaces at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca’s parking lot and during a couple of slow, controlled laps of the track. Rather than be disappointed by the tame lapping pace, the slow speed made it easy to tell what the car was doing when G-Vectoring engaged. Mazda gave us the opportunity to drive the car with the system switched on and with it off, making it even easier to detect its effects. Customers, however, will not have the option to deactivate G-Vectoring when Mazda brings it to market later this year.

As the nose dives forward and increases the front tires’ grip, G-Vectoring corrects understeer; the result is that you feel as if you’ve just switched from low-grip economy tires to tacky, aggressive rubber. The car turns in to corners quicker than before, which gives you more confidence in your ability to make tight turns. If anything, the experience feels as if the car makes you a more proficient driver.

For the Mazda6 we tested, G-Vectoring all but eliminated its understeer, even on slippery surfaces. G-Vectoring also reduced the amount of pitch and roll, which produced more precise on-center steering and decreased the car’s sway between lane lines.

G-Vectoring will debut on the Mazda6 later this year, while the rest of Mazda’s lineup will likely receive it further down the road. Engineers need additional time to tune other models to accept the new software, but it is worth noting they did not need to change a single piece of hardware for the system to function properly. But don’t expect Mazda to retrofit your car with the technology, as it says such an upgrade would require full programming of the original ECU.