Dyson drops out

[bungeejumper]

Gosh golly wow. Sir James has finally figured out that £2 billion won't be enough money after all to build an electric car that can compete with VW - which, BTW, plans to have spent $33 billion on EVs by the year 2023. So the whole Dyson car project is cancelled with immediate effect. Which will probably annoy Singapore (his new home), where he was planning to build it.

More interesting is that Dyson doesn't seem to have been able to sell the EV project to a competitor either. I'd have supposed that there would surely be something - motors, batteries, control systems, other whizzy bits - that would have interested somebody? But apparently not. How very odd.

BJ

[PinkDalek]

If of any interest, this got a mention in the 166 page topic at Macro and Global Topics:

viewtopic.php?p=256978#p256978

[supremetwo]

Gosh golly wow. Sir James has finally figured out that £2 billion won't be enough money after all to build an electric car that can compete with VW - which, BTW, plans to have spent $33 billion on EVs by the year 2023. So the whole Dyson car project is cancelled with immediate effect. Which will probably annoy Singapore (his new home), where he was planning to build it.

More interesting is that Dyson doesn't seem to have been able to sell the EV project to a competitor either. I'd have supposed that there would surely be something - motors, batteries, control systems, other whizzy bits - that would have interested somebody? But apparently not. How very odd. BJ

Trade wars?

Just now, there are so many questions as to where such manufacturing might be sited to avoid being involved in exposure to tariffs.

[bungeejumper]

Trade wars?

Just now, there are so many questions as to where such manufacturing might be sited to avoid being involved in exposure to tariffs.

Wouldn't that be ironic if it happened to a committed Brexiteer like Sir James, then?

It seems there is a god after all.

BJ

[Clariman]

Let's not forget that there are 500 UK jobs at stake here, one of which is a family member

[bungeejumper]

Let's not forget that there are 500 UK jobs at stake here, one of which is a family member

It'll certainly hit the Hullavington research centre, which is a few miles from here. An old RAF base, which was a go-karting centre before Mr D bought it. Looks like a case of back to the future, then.

I still can't quite get my head round the idea that Dyson ever thought he could take on Tesla and VW and the rest, and win. With just £2 billion of investment. At the very best, I supposed that he was working on some vital piece of technology that would have Elon Musk slavering for his global patent rights. But apparently not even that.

Why does all this remind me of Sir Clive Sinclair, who thought pretty much the same thing?

BJ

[PrincessB]

Why does all this remind me of Sir Clive Sinclair, who thought pretty much the same thing?

I would have hoped that two billion would have been sufficient to design some kind of retrofit EV system that would fit into existing cars. There's a pretty big market for this, admittedly at the higher end, I've seen the Jaguar XJS and DeLorean and from podcasts heard that someones elderly Ferrari is way better following conversion to electric as they could get the front/rear weight balance perfect by moving the batteries about.

I recall that the first Tesla was built into an old Lotus chassis and not very good. Some commentors have said that while newer Teslas are desirable, fun and stylish, they have the flaws that other companies with many decades of designing won't make.

It's a race and I applaude Tesla for shaking the tree and making the other car manufacturers take some note. Before Tesla, an EV was a slow box that didn't go far - Another quote was 'No one pulls up next to a Mustang in a Prius, winds down the window and says 'Buddy, you should see the gas mileage I get out of this'. Tesla made electric cars cool and it's pretty clear that the other manufacturers have taken note.

I can only assume that Mr Dyson (72) realises he won't have the time work from the ground up on a multi decade project and has pulled the plug. Elon Musk (48) does.

Were I, Mr Dyson, I'd be looking at using that two billion into researching how to heat and cool the growing EV fleet of cars, vans and trucks. He knows how to blow air around so why not use something you are rather good at to create something to sell to the other manufacturers who still don't seem to have much idea of how to properly heat or cool the interior of the cab space.

Anecdotally, someone at work bought an elderly Prius as a second car to his semi classic three litre Citroën which drinks fuel. His one complaint about the Toyota is the heating, which does not work at all on a short journey. His complaints about the Citroën are too numerous to mention.

Looks to me like Mr Dyson is missing the chance to make some serious cash and become the go to solution for all car manufacturers. We all know the names of Michelin, Dunlop, Bose, Bosch.

What about Dyson Air!

Regards,

B.

[bungeejumper]

The FT's Friday write-up was pretty comprehensive. It said that Hullavington staff had been drifting away for some time, and that nobody had been particularly surprised when it finally closed. Dyson had hired a lot of very experienced car industry people in the last year or two, and they had gently persuaded him that his idea (to make entire cars) would never fly because his competitors had the financial muscle to simply overwhelm his research capabilities.

The FT says that Dyson's particular trick was in using solid state lithium batteries, but that he had only ever expected to sell 10,000 vehicles at Range-Rover-style sizes but massively higher prices. (Does that mean 10,000 a year? The article doesn't make it clear.)

A good read, anyway, and very balanced. https://www.ft.com/content/1e032472-ec3 ... 0e5018f061 . If it's paywalled, try googling "Dyson’s electric car ride was not supposed to end like this".

BJ

[Lanark]

Looks to me like Mr Dyson is missing the chance to make some serious cash and become the go to solution for all car manufacturers. We all know the names of Michelin, Dunlop, Bose, Bosch.

What about Dyson Air!

Regards,

B.

I can't imagine very many people want to be deafened by any kind of Dyson machinery on a long car journey, it's bad enough just when visiting the toilets in a motorway service station for 5 minutes.

[dspp]

I recall that the first Tesla was built into an old Lotus chassis and not very good.

Your recollection, or more to the point the commentators you are recollecting, did not understand the point of the early Tesla roadsters that used the Lotus as the basis. They were essentially intended as the first "minimum viable experiment" to explore a series of technical, manufacturing, and marketing issues without exposing too much capital. Even so the amount of capital that this consumed would be too great for Dyson to compete with - Tesla went through about $600m in the first 6-years and are up to about $10bn now after about 15-years. So Dyson starting 15-years later with only perhaps £2bn never really had a chance especially as the segments he was considering were likely to go head-to-head with either VW, Rivian, BYD or Tesla.

Dyson really was out of his league here imho.

regards, dspp

[9873210]

His one complaint about the Toyota is the heating, which does not work at all on a short journey. His complaints about the Citroën are too numerous to mention.

Prius has supplemental electric heat. If you set the temperature to "MAX" you get heat within seconds, even when it's standing still after a cold start.