On the side of the angels
The pioneering inventor has received a knock-back, but he may yet return, finds Hasan Chowdhury
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It was set to be Sir James Dyson’s boldest bet to date. But after years of honing world-class engineering know-how in Britain, the pioneering inventor’s push into electric cars has come to a screeching halt. Sir James had high hopes that a Dyson car would be on the road in 2021, acknowledging that he was “risking everything” that the company had built as it ploughed £2.5bn into developing “the best car we can, as quickly as we can”.
So where exactly did it all go wrong? For one, building electric vehicles that can make a return is no easy feat.
According to Simon Moores, managing director at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, manufacturers need either the production capacity of automotive giants like Volkswagen or a unique technology that makes an investment worthwhile.
“It doesn’t surprise me if no one wants to buy the Dyson electric vehicle because it probably it wasn’t that special,” he said.
Sir James has insisted an engineering failure was not behind his decision to abandon the Singapore project. A team of 523 has been working on the scheme, the majority of whom are based in the UK where Dyson focuses its research efforts. The company had 22 employees in Singapore developing electric vehicles. Mr Moores said that Dyson had gone all in on a market-beating electric battery – and faced major challenges in pulling this off.
Dyson has touted solid-state batteries, potentially a game changer because they would allow cars to be charged more quickly and driven further between top-ups than the lithium-ion devices on which the industry presently relies.
Dependable, lithium-ion batteries have helped bring to life an industry that is set to see 125m electric vehicles on the road by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency.
But in a bid to stand out, Dyson opted to throw investment in research and development onto a technology that is largely untried and untested.
At the company’s campus in Malmesbury, where it is also looking at other competing battery technologies, a new facility has been finished to focus on solid-state systems with the aim of selling them to other firms now the company’s own car plans have been axed. “Solid-state batteries haven’t been cracked commercially at scale in an electric vehicle,” Moores said. “I have no doubt that was a big hurdle to their ambitions.”
There are, of course, other issues beyond commercial viability which are making electric vehicles a challenge for all players.
“The consumer desire for increased vehicle range is stretching the technological limits of battery usage, which in turn creates risk of failure” said Jonathan Cohen, a partner at international law firm Mayer Brown.
Dyson’s decision to cut the project was a hard one. The company has stressed that it will still commit to spending £2.5bn on research, with £1bn due to go towards electric vehicles to be spent in other areas.
A planned £200m spend in the UK on electric vehicle research – including a track site for driving – has mostly been completed.
The company is also looking to quickly fill vacancies at its home products business, which makes vacuum cleaners, hair driers and fans, with as many people as possible from the automotive arm. Dyson is doubling down on expansion in Singapore, where it already has 1,200 employees.
It all points to Dyson attempting to keep a foot in the game, and if some of the more core hurdles are overcome, such as the battery challenge.
“That’s really where the focus is: firstly production of lithium metal economically, secondly making solid state batteries properly work, I think that’s going to be their focus for now,” Moores said.
“If and when they crack it, that makes electric cars viable once again. Don’t be surprised if they get back into it.”
‘Solid-state batteries haven’t been cracked at scale in an electric vehicle’