WHEN AUTOCAR MET SIR JAMES DYSON
In 2009, Autocar met Sir James Dyson to find out if he could reinvent the car. Here are some of the highlights of the interview:
In Dyson’s car park, we have a new Toyota Avensis Tourer. So, Sir James, what do you think of this typical family car and how could things be done better?
“The dashboard is a jumble of switches and buttons,” he says. “Everything looks the same and there seems to be no particular order. Yes, you would eventually learn your way around, but it should be more instinctive.”
Perhaps by following JCB’S example of using brighter colours for important controls or the aviation industry’s use of colour-coding?
“Yes, exactly,” he says. “The heater controls could be colour-coded in, say, red. Everything to do with audio in another colour, and so on.”
It’s a foul day on our visit and Dyson starts peering at the windscreen wipers. “The trouble with wipers is that they brush the muck back and forth across the screen. Eventually it causes scratches in the glass,” he says.
“We’ve got a new hand drier called the Airblade. Air is blown through a very narrow slit and reaches around 400mph. It’s not heated, just very high velocity.
“Now, this idea could be transferred onto the car. Instead of a strip of rubber — which needs to be regularly replaced — wiping the screen, you’d have an invisible jet of air moving across it.”