Dyson’s EV a lost dream
James Dyson has revealed details of what would have been his company’s first electric vehicle. Nile Bijoux reports.
Dyson, longtime maker of vacuum cleaners, decided in 2017 that it needed to branch out. The industry it landed on? Automobiles – and the burgeoning electric vehicle sector at that.
It ended up axing the project in October last year but an interview between founder James Dyson and The Sunday Times has revealed some details about the car.
Codenamed N256, the vehicle was set to resemble a seven-seater SUV and use a cutting-edge solid-state battery good for nearly 1000km of range.
Dyson said the claim would even hold up ‘‘on a freezing [winter] night, on the naughty side of 70mph on the motorway, with the heater on and the radio at full blast’’.
That battery would send its power to two electric motors generating 400kW and 650Nm, enough to send the SUV to
100kmh in a bit less than five seconds. Top speed was said to be around 200kmh.
It would’ve looked good too, with a squared-off design, a raked-back windshield and tailgate, as well as the typically large wheels adorning a concept car. The cabin would have featured a futuristic holographic head-up display.
Everything was looking good but apparently the car was significantly eating away development funds (James Dyson put £500 million [NZ$1.009 billion] of his own money into the project), exacerbated by Dyson’s lack of other automobiles to generate income for the
N256.
A manufacturing plant in Singapore had even been lined up before the plug was pulled but each vehicle would’ve carried a sticker price of at least £150,000
(NZ$302k) to break even, a place Dyson wasn’t willing to go.
While we won’t get to confirm if the Dyson car rocked or sucked, it’s interesting to see how far through development it got, and what sort of specs it would have carried.
The vacuum maker sought a buyer for the project last October, but was unsuccessful, the company said in a statement at the time.
Dyson isn’t totally abandoning technology related to electric cars, though. It will continue its £2.5b
(NZ$5.05b) investment programme into new technology and plans to focus on manufacturing solid-state batteries and developing sensing technologies, vision systems, robotics, machine learning, and AI, Dyson said last year.
‘‘Our battery will benefit Dyson in a profound way and take us in exciting new directions,’’ he wrote, adding that the company’s investment appetite is undiminished and it will continue to deepen its roots in both the United Kingdom and Singapore.
‘‘Since day one we have taken risks and dared to challenge the status quo with new products and technologies,’’ Dyson said.
‘‘Such an approach drives progress, but has never been an easy journey – the route to success is never linear. This is not the first project which has changed direction and it will not be the last.
‘‘I remain as excited about the future of Dyson as I have always been; our ambitions have never been higher, our ability to invest has never been greater, and the team has never been stronger.’’