Dyson gets into electric car business

Heathcliff O’Malley

Dyson’s latest project might seem a bit outside its wheelhouse but when you think about it, the technology company has always been in the business of cleaning our air of pollutants. And so the company is turning its sights to electric vehicles as announced by James Dyson, the company’s founder and chief engineer. Dyson is set to unveil a battery-powered electric vehicle by the year 2020. It’s supposedly going to be a “radical and different” type of car.

The company is investing £2bn for developing the car and the battery. At this point, there is no prototype just yet and the factory site hasn’t been selected either. But 400 members of the Dyson staff have started working on the project at their Malmesbury, Wiltshire two years ago. The car itself will not be cheap, but that comes as no surprise as Dyson products are known to be pricey.

Dyson’s founder didn’t want to go into detail what they plan to do. As he mentions in an email to his staff, "Competition for new technology in the automotive industry is fierce and we must do everything we can to keep the specifics of our vehicle confidential.”

The idea, though, has been something Dyson has been thinking about and developing since the late ‘80s. And he goes as far to say that major automotive companies of polluting the world with diesel emissions. He says in the email, “Major auto manufacturers have circumvented and duped clean air regulations. As a result, developed and developing cities are full of smog-belching cars, lorries and buses. It is a problem that others are ignoring.”

Source: BBC