Dyson won’t build a car that sucks

You might have a Dyson in your house – but you won’t have one parked in your driveway any time soon.

That’s because UK vacuum cleaner company Dyson has cancelled its audacious plan to produce its first car because it’s not commercially viable.

News of Dyson’s EV project first emerged in 2016 and was officially confirmed a year later ahead of global launch in 2020, before patent drawings indicated earlier this year it would be a large electric crossover measuring around five metres long.

But according to a Reuters report, the company has now pulled the pin on Dyson Automotive, with Sir James Dyson – the inventor of the bagless vacuum cleaner – saying the sums simply didn’t add up.

An email reportedly sent by Dyson to his employees stated the £2.5 billion ($4.6b) EV project was no longer commercially viable and his company had failed to find a buyer for the operation.

Dyson stressed the move was not related to any failure in R&D, but made it clear the project would not have been profitable.

“The Dyson Automotive team has developed a fantastic car; they have been ingenious in their approach while remaining faithful to our philosophies," Dyson said in an email to staff.

“However, though we have tried very hard throughout the development process, we simply can no longer see a way to make it commercially viable.”

Dyson, 72, had planned to planned to disrupt the auto industry in the same way his vacuum cleaners challenged the domestic appliance market by producing three EV models from 2021, based on his company’s expertise in electric motors and new solid-state battery tech.

But just as EV-maker Tesla is yet to post a full-year profit after a decade in the market, it appears Dyson underestimated the complexity and cost of establishing a 100 per cent EV company.

Dyson Automotive had around 500 engineers working at two sites in southwest England, including some from car-makers such as Tesla and Aston Martin, plus former BMW and Infiniti executive Roland Krueger, who was appointed to lead the division in January.

Dyson says it is working to find alternative roles for as many of them as possible within other areas of its business, which also makes fans, hair dryers and air purifiers.

It says it will continue to develop solid-state batteries and other technology including vision systems, robotics, machine learning and AI at its UK engineering centre.

Dyson had selected Singapore – where its new global headquarters are now located -- to produce its EVs, which were to be aimed primarily at China and other Asian markets.

However, Dyson recently said he was rebuffed by Honda 12 months ago, when he proposed a deal to use one of its unused Swindon production lines in the UK. Since then Honda announced it will close its British plant in 2021 at the expense of 3500 jobs.