Sir James Dyson, the founder and owner of the British company Dyson best known for its cyclonic vacuum cleaners, has given up on his ambitious project to develop and manufacture electric cars. He broke the news to his employees through an email, which ended up in the newsrooms of several tech sites. Dyson explained that the waiver resulted from the inability to find a buyer interested in the project.
A couple of years ago, Dyson surprised many analysts and investors by announcing that they wanted to sell an electric car, different from those already on the road. At the end of August last year, it had exposed a plan with investments of over 2.5 billion pounds (2.8 billion euros) in various research fields, including that for electric vehicles. Many at the time wondered if Dyson had enough resources, both manpower and money, to carry out a project on such a large scale, and one that has kept some of the world's largest auto makers busy for decades.
In his email sent to employees late in the afternoon of Thursday 9 October, Dyson explained that the team: “They have developed a fantastic car: they have taken an ingenious approach while remaining true to our philosophy. However, even though we have worked hard in the development stages, we do not see how the product can be marketed in a sustainable way “.
Demonstration of the first prototype of the new electric car was initially scheduled for 2020, then postponed to 2021 when the company announced it needed more time. Production was supposed to take place in a Singapore plant and was to lead to the sale of more vehicles, with different characteristics. Dyson also explained that it was hard at work making solid-state batteries for use in its cars.
In just under a couple of years, Dyson had put about 600 employees on the electric car project: many of them will be relocated and given new jobs, according to the email no one should lose their jobs. Those who prefer to look for a new job can agree on their exit with the company.
Dyson explained that: “This is not a product failure, or a team failure, for which this news will still be hard to swallow. What they achieved was immense, considering the enormity and difficulty of the project “. Some of the solutions developed in these two years will however be carried forward to create solid state batteries, robots and artificial intelligence systems.
