Commercial, Distributed Energy Resources, Energy Storage, Industrial  -  October 2, 2017

Dyson to join EV market with $2.7B investment

Famous for its vacuum cleaners and bladeless fans, Dyson Ltd. has announced planned to enter the electric vehicle market by 2020 as startups and age-old automotive companies alike rev up their plans to compete in the space. 

Bloomberg News on Sept. 26 reported that Dyson founder James Dyson said the British manufacturing company is investing on billion pounds, or US$1.34 billion, to develop its own electric vehicle and a matching amount to create solid-state batteries to power it. 

As Bloomberg noted in its report, the company is joining an increasingly crowded market as companies from Tesla Inc. to Volkswagen AG to Mercedes-Benz execute plans for EV and battery lines.  Two days later on Sept. 28, Mazda Motor Corp., Denso and Toyota Corp. announced plans to develop a new company the will develop EV technology; and General Motors on Oct. 2 revealed it expected to have 20 models on the market by 2023. 

The New York Times noted that GM's announcement came a day before a long-scheduled investor presentation from Ford Motor Co. that was also expected to focus on electric vehicle plans; and that after GM, Ford "let loose its own plan," which calls for the addition of 13 electric models in the next several years. 

For Dyson's part, Bloomberg reported that its founder said his car would be "radically different" than those being designed by other car makers, including Tesla. 

"There's no point doing something that looks like everyone else's," the news agency quoted Dyson as saying. "It is not a sports car and not a very cheap car." 

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