Dyson is known for its bagless vacuums and bladeless fans, but those apparently have more or less been stepping stones for the British firm.
James Dyson sent an email to his employees Tuesday, which was later posted via the Dyson’s Twitter, confirming that the company plans to put an all-electric car on-sale by 2020. A 400-person team reportedly has been working on the car behind closed doors for two years, and Dyson has pledged a commitment to investing upward of £2 billion ($2.69 billion) on the project.
The EV will utilize a next-generation solid-state battery, which has a much higher energy density than lithium-ions, which currently are used by automakers. In fact, the cutting-edge power storage — among other things that Dyson outlined in his memo — factored into Dyson’s decision not to collaborate with an OEM on the vehicle.
“We don’t have an existing prototype, and what we’re doing is quite radical so there’s not an existing chassis that we can use,” Dyson told Auto Express.
Dyson claims he mostly didn’t partner with an existing manufacturer because they would not have brought much value to the table. He reportedly has been interested in building an EV since the late 1980s, but expressed his discouragement with the fact that automakers for the most part invested very little in the technology until the fallout of “Dieselgate” all but forced them to.
Thumbnail photo via Flickr/Conservatives
