Dyson Unplugged

Vacuum Magnate James Dyson blew a billion dollars trying to revolutionise the car. He reveals why it was axed at the eleventh hour – and what he learned

- Steve Cropley

The sudden demise of the Dyson electric car project last October was one of the most shocking events of postwar car history – because it was so unexpected. Backed by £2.5 billion (A$4.5bn) of personal investment from Britain’s richest man, Sir James Dyson, the all electric seven-seat luxury car had seemed set for the same shining future as most of Dyson’s previous projects.

But in an email announcing the project’s closure, sent to employees on October 11 last year – almost a year to the day – the inventor revealed that “we simply can no longer see a way to make the project commercially viable”.

The nub of the problem, he claimed, was that most current electric cars were loss-makers whose manufacturers were using them as a way of lowering fleet average CO2 so they could continue selling conventional cars profitably. They were serious about their electric cars for the long term but for now profits were not the priority. These cheap EVs would price the approximately A$300K Dyson electric car out of the market in its critical launch years, Dyson explained, and he could see no way around it. So he took a fateful decision that “tore all our hearts out” but protected the rest of the Dyson business.

At the time, precious little was known about the Dyson electric car outside the company: no details on size, powertrain, running gear and mechanical layout apart from some loose descriptions of a “possible” concept issued about six months before the demise, apparently to support patent applications.