6:52 am, May 18, 2020
James Dyson blew £500m on his canned electric car project – as pictures of the axed car are revealed for the first time.
In an article to celebrate his ascension to the top of the Sunday Times Rich List – a place secured with a fortune of £16.2bn – he explains how the 600-mile electric car had to be canned.
The paper reports that the seven-seat electric SUV – code named N526 – would have had to cost £150,000 to turn a profit, a figure Dyson thought was too dear.
Dyson drove the electric car at the company’s Wiltshire research centre – on a test track shielded from view, but after that realised he’d have to pull the plug. He was devastated at making the decision.
He said: ‘There’s huge sadness and disappointment. Ours is a life of risk and failure. We try things and they fail. Life isn’t easy.’
The Sunday Time report adds: ‘Not only has he axed it before going into production, it has cost him £500m of his own money. Dyson is a private company. It is a salutary reminder that in a world where billionaires tend to get richer in their sleep, the can still screw up royally.’
Stats about the car were also revealed by Dyson. It had two 200kWh electric motors, 536bhp, could hit 60 mph in 4.8 seconds and weighs in at 2.6 tons.
The huge wheels were set to be bigger than anything on the market – at one metre in diameter – and Dyson told the paper the windscreen had ‘a steeper rake than a Ferrari’.
The car was set to feature typical Dyson quirks too – the quirky interior had door bins that pulled out like filing cabinets and a dashboard that displayed information on a hologram that ‘floated in front of your face’.
Dyson said he recognised most manufacturers make electric cars to lower the fleet CO2 costs, but his project was different – he needed to turn a profit from the start.
He added: ‘I don’t have a fleet. I’ve got to make a profit on each car or I’d jeopardise the whole company. In the end it was too risky.
‘It was not a vanity project at all. When we started in 2014 we had good technology and a very efficient car with a long range. It was viable. Bit when, later, other companies started producing electric cars at a loss, it became too risky for us.’
While the Dyson car project has been canned for now, it seems it might not be over forever.
Asked by the Sunday Times if he’d ever have another crack, he says: ‘I wouldn’t say no, but the commercial circumstances would have to be right. The garage door never closes.’
- Join our WhatsApp group to get updates sent straight to your phone. Email us via the website here to get a link to join.
- Download the latest digital issue of Car Dealer Magazine Issue 147 for free here
