Founder of Dyson Announces Plans to Make an Electric Car

The Founder of Dyson Announces Plans to Make an Electric Car

Dyson, best known for making vacuums, air filters, and hand driers, is branching out and joining the already crowded and competitive field of auto making. Founder, James Dyson, just announced the company's plan to build an electric car by 2020. In an investment that dwarfs all expenditures spent on research and development in their current field of expertise, the company intends to allocate $1.34 billion dollars EACH to the development of the car and the creation of solid-state batteries to power it.

The current competition in the electric car battleground all hail from a chiefly auto manufacturing background and include bigwigs like Volkswagen, Tesla, and Toyota. However, all of these contenders currently use or plan on using lithium-ion batteries in their electric models. Dyson plans on using solid-state batteries which are smaller, more efficient, and easier to charge. Only Toyota so far has announced that they would like to make the shift over to solid-state versus lithium for electric models by the early 2020s.

During the big reveal, Dyson claims that their electric car will be “radically different” than any others in production or on the market now. While he asserts that “it is not a sports car and not a very cheap car,” his main resolution was that it was pointless to make something that looks like everybody else's. The aim is that this first design will just be first of many, and that eventually, electric cars will be the main source of revenue for the Dyson brand, essentially eclipsing all other products they currently have on the market.

Although the announcement of the plan to build a new electric car was surprising, Dyson has been involved in battery development for years now, beginning back in 2015 when they bought a start-up called Satki3 for $90 million. The Michigan-based firm claimed to have made exciting breakthroughs in battery technology, and although, that has since been dis-proven, they are still one of two groups in competition under Dyson working on solid-state battery development.

Don't be fooled into thinking that the vacuum cleaner company is supplying all the funds for this massive endeavor alone. The U.K. has actually given Dyson a grant that amounts to nearly $21.5 million. And this car project, it's not a pipe dream, it has actually been in the works for over two years in secret. The announcement only came now after the element of secrecy was found to be hindering dealings with auto part manufacturers and suppliers and negatively affecting recruiting efforts. Of course, some more perceptive bystanders may have noticed that Dyson has poached a number of prominent hires from Tesla and Aston Martin in the past year to work on this exciting new project. In light of the breaking developments from Dyson, we, here at A1 Auto Transport, wish them nothing but the best in their future endeavors and look forward to catching a glimpse of a Dyson electric car prototype as soon as its available.