It’s a sedan shape in a market drowning in SUVs, it glides along quietly, the standard 14-speaker Sony stereo sounds like it belongs in a dearer car, and my week of Sydney driving covered 400km on a single charge. Worth weighing up before you buy: the 337-litre boot is modest for a car this long, and the lane centring tugs at the wheel rather than nudging it. We scored it 7.7 out of 10.

The Mazda 6e GT is $49,990 before on-road costs. I spent a week with one, in a light grey with the warm beige interior, mostly around Sydney. I was surprised to see this as a Mazda wearing a 6 badge, because it looks a whole lot nicer than the ones I grew up with in the early 2000s.

It’s refreshing to see a sedan at all when the general trend has been towards big and small SUVs like the Xpeng G6. Mazda calls the 6e a five-door hatchback, but it looks like a regular sedan, and I’ll treat it as one. The electric sedans that do exist, the BYD Seal and the Tesla Model 3, sit either side of it on price. Drive-away, Mazda’s own delivered pricing runs from about $52,666 in the NT to $56,296 in WA.

A week with the Mazda 6e GT

The bit that stuck with me all week was the front end at night. There’s a series of LEDs that glow around what would have been the grille. Most EVs don’t need a grille and often look a little odd without one, just a flat front face. The LEDs surrounding this one make it look normal, and after dark the glow is a genuine highlight.

I ran the battery down to 8 percent and plugged into an Ampol charger. It took 59.382kWh in 26 minutes and 44 seconds and cost me $44.28 including GST. The car was pulling 150kW until someone else plugged in beside me and it dropped to 133kW, so the charger was the limit, not the car. Before that stop I’d covered 400 kilometres around Sydney and still had 8 percent showing.

The niggle that never went away was the voice-assistant button on the steering wheel. Have your hands at the wrong point of the wheel while turning and it activates on the slightest of nudges. The other one: the left side of the driver’s display kept telling me to “Check and setup navigation app on main screen before using”, because I prefer Android Auto over the built in navigation, and I couldn’t find a button to change that.

What does the Mazda 6e look like?

The sporty look was a bit of a shock for what I’ve always known as a modest family sedan. The front three-quarter looks good, as it does on most cars, but the rear three-quarter looks equally good, and that’s the rarer thing. It comes across as sleek rather than awkward.

The spoiler got the inner child in me excited. It’s a “Veyron like” wing that dips into the boot and rises when you unlock the car. Our car wore a light grey over the 19-inch alloys; Mazda offers seven colours, three of them at extra cost.

What is the Mazda 6e like inside?

The interior surprised me. It feels more like a Mercedes than a classic Mazda sedan. The warm beige seats with black finishes and silver accents give it a real premium feel, and they fooled me: they feel like leather, but they’re Maztex, Mazda’s synthetic, and a $1,000 option exclusive to the GT. Real leather is Atenza-only.

Both front seats are power adjusted, heated and ventilated, the steering wheel is heated, the driver’s seat has memory, and a panoramic sunroof with a powered blind is standard. There are 64 colours of ambient lighting, for the four you’ll actually use.

Storage

The cabin is sensibly sorted: a covered centre console, wireless charging pad, bottle holders in all four doors, cupholders front and rear, a 12-volt outlet, and USB-A plus USB-C up front with another USB-C in the back. Under the bonnet there’s a 72-litre frunk, which happens to be the right size for the charging cables.

Rear seat and boot space

The back seat gets its own air vents, a USB-C port, a fold-down armrest, adjustable head restraints and a 40/60 split fold, with two ISOFIX points and three top tethers. The roof slopes hard into the tail, and I didn’t sit back there during the week, so I’m not going to tell you how it feels.

The boot is the weak spot. 337 litres with the seats up is modest for a car nearly five metres long. Fold the seats and it opens to 678 litres to the parcel shelf, or 1,074 to the ceiling. The liftback tailgate means the opening is never the problem; the 337 litres behind it is. There’s no spare wheel, just an inflation kit, which is fine on a car like this because you’ll generally be within quick NRMA distance if it’s too bad. Braked towing is 1,500kg.

Technology and connectivity

The Sony sound system was great. There’s a sub in the back, and while it’s not as good as an aftermarket system, it’ll suit almost everyone without feeling like you have to upgrade. Cranking the bass was enjoyable, you can feel the hum of the rhythm, and it adds to an already good driving experience. The closest comparison I can make is the Genesis I drove earlier this year, and that car costs roughly three times as much, which tells you how much stereo fifty grand is buying here.

A 14.6-inch touchscreen runs the infotainment, with a 10.2-inch driver’s display and a head-up display that projects 3D arrows onto the road when you use the built in navigation. I don’t know whether that’s useful or a gimmick, but it was a nice surprise. CarPlay and Android Auto are both wireless.

The catch is the one from earlier: the driver’s display will only show the built in navigation’s map. Prefer Waze or Android Auto and you’re choosing between your map on the centre screen or Mazda’s map with the 3D arrows. Other cars are happy to show Waze in the driver’s dash. This one isn’t.

Highlighted Features

• Electric rear spoiler: sits flush in the bootlid and rises when you unlock the car.
• Augmented-reality head-up display: projects 3D directional arrows onto the road ahead, using the built in navigation.
• Vehicle to load: up to 3.5kW of household power out of the car via an adaptor.

Engine and drivetrain

A single motor drives the rear wheels with 190kW and 290Nm, fed by a 78kWh lithium iron phosphate battery. Mazda claims 560km of range and doesn’t publish a 0 to 100km/h time, so I won’t invent one. The full numbers live in the tables below.

Charging is a strong suit. The DC ceiling is 194kW, and most public fast chargers in Australia top out at 150kW, so unlike a car rated at 350kW that spends its life disappointed, the 6e takes everything a typical charger has to offer. Mazda quotes about 24 minutes for 10 to 80 percent, and my 8 to 80 percent stop took 26 and a half while sharing the site’s power. At home, a full charge takes about eight hours on an 11kW wallbox.

What’s the Mazda 6e like to drive?

It’s smooth, with minimal road noise, and the drive feels like a glide. Planted is the other word. Two tonnes sounds alarming until you notice it’s exactly why the car feels nailed down; I didn’t feel the road too much, and in the times I didn’t have music blasting, I didn’t really hear anything either, even on highways.

It definitely looks faster than it is, but it’s no slouch either. It won’t throw you back in your seat, but there’s some pace behind it, even in Comfort, where I left it most of the week. The drive modes are more subtle changes than big ones. And with the power coming from the back, it steers nicely, with none of the tugging you get when the front wheels are doing both jobs.

Rear-wheel drive is something you don’t see these days, even more so on an EV. Plenty of JDM icons started life as ordinary family cars, and I couldn’t help thinking this might be one of those cars in 20 or 30 years, purely because it’s rear-wheel drive. Drifting one wasn’t something I’d do in a test car, but I did wonder what it’d be like in the right hands.

My main gripe is the lane centring. With cruise control on, the car wants you dead centre of the lane, and it’s willing to insist: on any deviation you feel it tugging you back across, as opposed to a beep or a gentler nudge.

Is the Mazda 6e safe?

The 6e carries a five-star ANCAP rating with a 2025 datestamp, applying to all variants: 93 percent for adult occupant protection, 93 percent for child occupant protection, 74 percent for vulnerable road users and 79 percent for safety assist. Worth knowing: it was assessed against ANCAP’s 2023 to 2025 criteria rather than the tougher 2026 protocols, so it’s not directly comparable with a car rated under the newer rules. The rating runs until December 2031.

• Smart Brake Support with pedestrian and cyclist detection, plus rear crossing support
• Blind Spot Monitoring with vehicle exit warning, and rear cross traffic alert
• Emergency Lane Keeping with road keep assist and blind spot assist, plus lane-keep assist
• 360-degree view monitor with see-through view, front and rear parking sensors, driver monitoring and traffic sign recognition

Airbags run to front, side front and rear, curtain front and rear, and a far-side bag for the driver. The driver monitoring wasn’t very noticeable in a week of driving, which isn’t true of every system of its type.

How much does the Mazda 6e cost?

The GT starts at $49,990 before on-road costs, the Atenza at $52,990. Mazda publishes a recommended delivered price by state, covering rego, CTP, stamp duty and dealer delivery: from about $52,666 in the NT to $56,296 in WA, with NSW at $54,817. Our test car had the $1,000 warm beige interior, a GT-only option, taking it to $50,990 before on-roads.

For that you get 19-inch alloys, the 14.6-inch touchscreen, the head-up display, the Sony audio, a 360-degree camera, the panoramic sunroof, heated and ventilated front seats, a heated wheel, a powered tailgate, the rising spoiler, wireless charging and vehicle to load. The Atenza adds tan leather, a leather wheel and suede trim, and nothing mechanical. Everything that makes this car good is already on the GT, which makes the cheaper one the pick.

How much does the Mazda 6e cost to run?

Mazda covers the 6e with a five year, unlimited kilometre warranty and eight years of high-voltage battery cover, though it doesn’t publish a distance cap on the battery term. Servicing is every 12 months or 20,000km at capped prices of $220, $318, $726, $318 and $220, so $1,802 over five years, or $2,846 over seven. The dear visits are the fluid services at years three and six. Mazda’s 6e page advertises five years of Premium Roadside Assistance.

The trip computer showed 15.5kWh/100km over the week, against Mazda’s 15.9 claim. At a typical home rate of about 33 cents a kilowatt hour that’s roughly $5.12 per 100km, dropping to about $1.24 on a cheap overnight EV plan. Public DC is another story: my $44.28 Ampol stop works out closer to $14 per 100km. Charge at home and this is a very cheap car to run. Rely on public fast chargers and it isn’t.

On range, be realistic. I covered 400km and still had 8 percent showing, which points to about 435km in the real world rather than the 560km on the sticker. Respectable for heavy urban running, but budget on the smaller number.

Final thoughts

Buy the 6e if you’re looking for a premium sound system and a sedan-like shape. It’s quiet, well equipped for the money and cheap to service, and the GT is the one to have, because the Atenza adds trim and nothing else.

Walk past it if you need the amount of room you get from an SUV. Something like the Kia EV5 gives you far more boot for similar money. The BYD Seal and Tesla Model 3 are the obvious cross-shops, and the Mazda undercuts the Tesla on list price while matching the BYD. If you want an electric sedan with far more pace, the IM5 Performance exists, at a much higher price.

The sedan is a shape I feel is sorely missed, and this is a good one to bring it back.

2026 Mazda 6e GT — Frequently Asked Questions

How far does the Mazda 6e go on a charge?
Mazda claims 560km on the WLTP cycle from the 78kWh lithium iron phosphate battery. In our week of mixed suburban and motorway driving in Sydney we covered 400km with 8 percent charge remaining, which points to a real-world range of roughly 435km.

How much does the Mazda 6e cost in Australia?
The 6e GT starts at $49,990 before on-road costs and the Atenza at $52,990. Mazda’s recommended delivered price for the GT ranges from about $52,666 in the Northern Territory to $56,296 in Western Australia, depending on state charges.

How long does the Mazda 6e take to charge?
Mazda quotes approximately 24 minutes for a 10 to 80 percent DC fast charge at up to 194kW. On our test an 8 to 80 percent charge took 26 minutes and 44 seconds on a 150kW public charger while sharing site power. A full AC charge takes about eight hours on an 11kW wallbox.

Is the Mazda 6e GT worth buying?
Yes, if you want a well equipped electric sedan rather than an SUV. The GT includes a 14-speaker Sony stereo, an augmented-reality head-up display and a panoramic sunroof as standard, and costs $1,802 to service over five years. It is less convincing if you need boot space, at 337 litres with the seats up.

For the latest pricing and to book a test drive, visit Mazda Australia.

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