You might think of Apple or Google as unlikely automakers?but Dyson, the company that?s best known for its vacuums"
Yes, seriously, Dyson. The U.K. company announced it will launch a battery-electric vehicle by 2020, with first deliveries in early 2021. But the company hasn?t yet decided where to build it or how it will be sold, and it has only started to develop the model. According to company founder Sir James Dyson, the company is prepared to spend $2.7 billion on the project, with that spending to be split down the middle between battery technology and the vehicle itself.
The company has already brought in 400 additional employees for the EV project and taken over an old World War II airfield in Wiltshire, England. And, as Dyson put it, they are continuing to recruit aggressively. In an email sent out to the entire company, Dyson said his concerns about vehicle emissions and public health go back to the late 1980s, with a U.S. paper linking diesel-engine exhaust to premature death in laboratory mice and rats. That led to the development of a cyclonic particulate filter that could be fitted to diesel trucks?a project that was poorly received by commercial-truck manufacturers.
?At this moment, we finally have the opportunity to bring all our technologies together into a single product,? explained Dyson, pointing to the company?s work not just with vacuums but with hair dryers, fans, heaters, and air purifiers and the related airflow and fluid-dynamics work. ?Rather...