Dyson the vacuum cleaner company which has a manufacturing and research factory in Senai Johor is best known for its vacuum cleaners and hand dryers is now looking to tackle the growing electric car demand. Dyson is investing 2 billion pounds (USD2.6 billion) in its electric cars program as it starts building vehicle-testing and technology site in England. British inventor and founder, James Dyson, has a team of 400 engineers who have been working on the £2.5bn project since 2015.
The technology center at the former Hullavington Airfield in England will bring the British manufacturer’s investment to 200 million pounds to create engineering work spaces and over 17km of test tracks. This Sheffield-based electronics company issued an official statement last Thursday which included, “Our growing automotive team is now working from Dyson’s state-of-the-art hangars at Hullavington Airfield,” CEO Jim Rowan said in the statement. “We are now firmly focused on the next stage of our automotive project strengthening our credentials.”
Dyson said on Thursday it expected the vehicle to be on the road sometime in 2021. The company is joining a list of traditional and new competitors entering an increasingly crowded race to make electric cars. Volkswagen, Daimler and General Motors all plan to offer a suite of electric vehicles starting from about next year, while Tesla is pushing into the mass market with the Model 3.
Unlike those carmakers that use established lithium-ion battery technology, Dyson will use solid-state batteries it says are smaller and more efficient. Toyota is also working on solid-state batteries and last year said it hoped to have them in electric vehicles by the early 2020s.
Dyson, which already counts a 400-strong automotive team, said it plans to add another 300 positions to work on the car in the UK. That will help to offset a long list of companies moving operations out of the country amid concern for negative fallout from Brexit.
