Work on the development of an electric car to be launched by 2020 is being conducted by the company of James Dyson, the billionaire British inventor of the bagless vacuum cleaner, the businessman said.
The expertise on solid-state battery technology and electric motors to be found in his innovative vacuum cleaners and other products like bladeless fans and air purifiers is being exploited by the company which also is named after Dyson, and for this purpose the company was spending 2 billion pounds ($2.7 billion).
“Battery technology is very important to Dyson, electric motors are very important to Dyson, environmental control is very important to us,” Dyson, aged 71, said at his company’s flagship shop on London’s Oxford Street.
“I have been developing these technologies consistently because I could see that one day we could do a car.”
2-1/2 years working on the hitherto secret car project in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, has already been spent by a 400-strong team of engineers, Dyson said. However, the choice of battery to be finalized and the car itself still has to be designed.
He said that because it was safer, the batteries would not overheat, were quicker to charge and potentially more powerful, the company was backing solid-state rather than the lithium ion technology used in existing electric vehicles.
the car industry’s dismissal of an idea he had of applying his cyclonic technology that revolutionised vacuum cleaners to handle diesel emissions in car exhaust systems in the 1990s was the driving force behind his ambition to go it alone, Dyson said.
“We are not a johnny-come-lately onto the scene of electric cars,” he said. “It has been my ambition since 1998 when I was rejected by the industry, which has happily gone on making polluting diesel engines, and governments have gone on allowing it.”
There had already been clues that Dyson was working on a car.
Although the entry was quickly changed, last year the government said in a report it was helping to fund development work on an electric vehicle at the firm, and his company has been hiring executives from Aston Martin.
Because it was becoming harder to talk to subcontractors, government and potential new employees, Dyson said he was coming clean now.
Beyond ruling out working with the big car companies, the company had not yet decided where it will be made, and the car does not yet have a design nor a chassis, he said.
”Wherever we make the battery, we’ll make the car, that’s logical,“ he said. ”So we want to be near our suppliers, we want to be in a place that welcomes us and is friendly to us, and where it is logistically most sensible.
“And we see a very large market for this car in the Far East.”
Beyond saying it would not be like anything else already on the market, Dyson gave no details of the concept for the vehicle.
“There’s no point in doing one that looks like everyone else‘s,” he said, adding that it would not be a sports car and it would not be “a very cheap” car.
(Source:www.reuters.com)
The expertise on solid-state battery technology and electric motors to be found in his innovative vacuum cleaners and other products like bladeless fans and air purifiers is being exploited by the company which also is named after Dyson, and for this purpose the company was spending 2 billion pounds ($2.7 billion).
“Battery technology is very important to Dyson, electric motors are very important to Dyson, environmental control is very important to us,” Dyson, aged 71, said at his company’s flagship shop on London’s Oxford Street.
“I have been developing these technologies consistently because I could see that one day we could do a car.”
2-1/2 years working on the hitherto secret car project in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, has already been spent by a 400-strong team of engineers, Dyson said. However, the choice of battery to be finalized and the car itself still has to be designed.
He said that because it was safer, the batteries would not overheat, were quicker to charge and potentially more powerful, the company was backing solid-state rather than the lithium ion technology used in existing electric vehicles.
the car industry’s dismissal of an idea he had of applying his cyclonic technology that revolutionised vacuum cleaners to handle diesel emissions in car exhaust systems in the 1990s was the driving force behind his ambition to go it alone, Dyson said.
“We are not a johnny-come-lately onto the scene of electric cars,” he said. “It has been my ambition since 1998 when I was rejected by the industry, which has happily gone on making polluting diesel engines, and governments have gone on allowing it.”
There had already been clues that Dyson was working on a car.
Although the entry was quickly changed, last year the government said in a report it was helping to fund development work on an electric vehicle at the firm, and his company has been hiring executives from Aston Martin.
Because it was becoming harder to talk to subcontractors, government and potential new employees, Dyson said he was coming clean now.
Beyond ruling out working with the big car companies, the company had not yet decided where it will be made, and the car does not yet have a design nor a chassis, he said.
”Wherever we make the battery, we’ll make the car, that’s logical,“ he said. ”So we want to be near our suppliers, we want to be in a place that welcomes us and is friendly to us, and where it is logistically most sensible.
“And we see a very large market for this car in the Far East.”
Beyond saying it would not be like anything else already on the market, Dyson gave no details of the concept for the vehicle.
“There’s no point in doing one that looks like everyone else‘s,” he said, adding that it would not be a sports car and it would not be “a very cheap” car.
(Source:www.reuters.com)