A few days ago Dyson announced its plans to introduce a new electric car. Shortly after the announcement, founder James Dyson also revealed that he eventually wants to introduce a range of electric vehicles.
Dyson is known for its clever vacuums and other household devices, but this new venture will take the company in a completely different direction. Dyson has already set aside $2.6 billion for the project and hopes to have its first electric car on the market by 2020.
In an interview with Auto Express, James Dyson also revealed that Dyson has yet to build a working prototype of the new EV. He’s also confident that the company will be able to make a profit on its first electric car.
“Getting into doing a new-technology car is different, and the cars should be different, because they can’t be built like internal combustion-engined cars. But the up-front investment in the body-in-white is a huge investment. Over the years, we’d hope to get payback on that initial investment in the body-in-white so, yes, we hope to have a range of cars,” Dyson stated.
Dyson’s electric car will also differ from today’s electric cars, since it will use solid-state batteries instead of the lithium-ion batteries that are used today. Solid-State batteries offer greater energy density and are lighter than lithium-ion batteries, so it’s expected that they will eventually become the norm.
“Over past almost 20 years I’ve been developing new battery technology and new electric motors. Our digital motors are the fastest production electric motors in the world. A few years ago we bought Sakti3 which has some very interesting solid-state battery technology. But we’re also developing other forms of solid-state batteries.”
Source: Auto Express
