Dyson investing £1 billion on car development, same on solid state batteries
Dyson Ltd., the company best know for manufacturing vacuum cleaners, hand driers, air filters and fans says it will build an electric car by 2020, according to a report by Bloomberg.
On Tuesday, its founder James Dyson announced that the company will invest £1 billion to develop the EV as well as £1 billion to advance solid-state battery technology to power the car.
A number of automakers, including VW, Daimler, Toyota and Tesla are already well into development and, in some cases, the production of EVs.
Most of the companies are using lithium-ion batteries to power their cars. Dyson will join Toyota in using solid-state batteries which will be smaller, more efficient and easier to charge and possibly easier to recycle. The company has received £16 million from the British government for battery research.
Dyson says his electric car will be “radically different” from those already being designed or currently available.
“There’s no point doing something that looks like everyone else’s,” he told Bloomberg.
Dyson says the vehicle unveiled in 2020 will be the first of a fleet of EVs from Dyson, adding that in the coming years, he sees electric cars being the largest source of revenue for the company.
According to Dyson, the company has 400 engineers working on the EV project. The work has been done in secret for the past two-and-a-half years and the company has hired away some staff from Aston Martin and Tesla.
Bloomberg reports the company is going public with its plans because secrecy concerning the project got in the way of its ability to do deals with auto parts suppliers and hampered recruiting as well.
Dyson says his company does not have the funds to build its own charging network as well as the cars and batteries. He said the lack of charging infrastructure is one of the biggest impediments to EV adoption.
So, Dyson is hoping the UK government will help subsidize the installation of 21 kilowatt plug points in EV owners’ homes. The charging stations would allow drivers to recharge their cars at home in their own garage.
Battery and car manufacturing facilities for the Dyson cars will likely be in Asia and design work will be at Hullavington Airfield, a former training site for the RAF located in Wiltshire, England.
