Can The Dyson Vacuum Cleaner Guy Build A Better Electric Car Than Tesla’s Elon Musk?
The world sales volume of electric cars is still barely a percentage point or two of the total annual sales of all cars, but just like a noisy clutch of protesters, they’re getting all of the attention these days. Part of that signal flare of attention has to do with the rather noisy Elon Musk, head of the always-about-to-go-under-but-keeps-making-amazing-cars-anyway Tesla Motors.
It’s been a decade now since Musk and his first group of engineering acolytes re-skinned a Lotus into the first Tesla Roadster by the light of the moon and with a bit of duct tape, some 9-volt batteries and baling wire (some exaggeration may have crept in right there).
But it’s no exaggeration that Musk and his now almost $200 billion car company (one of three or four or five companies he’s simultaneously running) is still the runaway market leader, the top designer and the overwhelming best seller of electric cars in the world today. Ten years later.
The groundbreaking 2012 Tesla Model S should have been the wake-up call to every carmaker on Earth to get moving on EV design and product, but so far, it’s been a trickle of ideas, an endless parade of sci-fi concept cars and very few actual production models from the industry at large, with the short-range Nissan Leaf and Chevy’s non-descript Bolt being the main bannermen for Big Auto Inc. And that’s after Musk essentially released his patents into the wild for free to help jump-start the industry. Still: We have the Leaf and Bolt to show for it. Meanwhile, Tesla has expanded its active lineup to four highly capable cars, with electric semi trucks and the outrageous Roaster 2.0 waiting in the wings.
Can anyone, anywhere build a better electric vehicle (EV) than Tesla? The guy who arguably makes the best vacuums you can buy (among other wind-centered things) thinks he can, and I wouldn’t bet against him. However, it’s not a sure thing by any measure.
Bespectacled Brit vacuum czar and billionaire James Dyson is about as un-Elon as you can get. In 2017, Dyson fairly shocked the auto industry by saying he was going to put a tick over $3 billion into creating an electric car, and has recently released some patent applications that may (or may not) give some insight into what we might be able to expect from the future electrified Dyson people mover.
The Dyson electric car drawing from a patent application shows a swoopy form factor not unlike the Tesla Model Y and with three rows of seats. IMAGE: PATENTSCOPE
Rather than try to read the tea leaves of a surely inaccurate line drawing of a car that may end up looking something like an XC90 or GL450 or a Subaru Forester or whatever, consider instead the attributes and peculiarities of Sir James Dyson himself, and what he’s done so far that bodes well for his adventure into the EV space.
Like Elon Musk, Dyson is an accomplished engineer
If you’re still pushing around a wheezing 30-year-old vacuum your mom gave you in college, it’s past time to upgrade. Buy a Dyson vacuum cleaner. It works. I mean, it really works. Yes, it’s expensive, the good stuff in life usually is. But a Dyson product is in Apple territory: Great design, looks good/different, consistently works better than the competition, often much better. It’s got that feel, that look, that special something. And for the most part, it works quietly. You don’t have to turn up your earpods nearly as much while cleaning.
Why is it so good? Because Sir James Dyson is particular. Picky. Precise. Dyson is privately held, so no one is telling him to dumb down the products to calm investor whining. Instead, Dyson and his robust team of engineers do what companies, private or public, should always be doing: Refining. Improving. Innovating. That’s the consistent special sauce Dyson brings to their products, the je ne sais quoi that nudges customers to buy Dyson products one after another after they get their first taste. That bodes well for car design now and into the future.
But unlike Elon, James Dyson isn’t an impulsively tweeting, sleep-deprived taskmaster when it comes to work. Dyson, 71, has been around the block more than a few times. He built Dyson Ltd. the old-fashioned way, from the ground up, with a lot of hard work (Wikipedia says he made over 5,000 prototypes of his first vacuum before success) and little if any assistance from governments or anyone else besides his wife (a teacher) for that matter. He is the turtle to Elon’s jackrabbit. But he’ll have to move fast if he wants to make it in the car space in a timely manner. And it looks like he is.
Dyson is obsessed with motors and batteries
Dyson’s battery-powered hand vacs work because, sure, he perfected that cyclonic separation voodoo years ago, but lately he’s been pouring the coals to making two key technologies work better. The first is electric motors. Dyson vacuums have motors that spin at up to 125,000rpm, and they’re running at length on batteries housed inside a small enclosure you’re waving around like a lightsaber. That’s impressive. See anything there that might work in an electric car?
Now, scale it all up. The tech, the know-how, the ways and means are already there. Dyson bought an old RAF base in Britain and converted into an R&D facility for the electric car project, and a large manufacturing facility for the cars is now under construction in Singapore. Dyson has said the cars should begin production in 2020, just seven short months from now. Will it happen? Tesla is notorious for sliding back production realities after rosy promises, and while building cars is not the same as building vacuum cleaners, something tells me that at some point in the next 19 months, it would not be a shock to hear that early production samples are rolling off the lines in Singapore.
Perhaps the biggest obstacle for Dyson will be batteries. While the company continues to improve battery performance and operating times for its products and is a leading battery maker, Dyson is also clearly pursuing the holy grail of battery tech: The solid-state battery. Dyson has invested millions in the battery startup Sakti3, headed up by Ann Marie Sastry. Quite clearly, he is not alone in this quest. But if Dyson can get there first, it could be the tech catapult that launches the Dyson car venture over Tesla and everyone else for that matter.
Patenting a workable, scalable solid-state battery technology and then selling it for billions upon billions to competitors changes the game not just for cars (and Dyson), but for batteries, which the world will increasingly run on as it weans off petroleum’s teat. And a company full of engineers making ever-better battery-powered vacuums and other products could very well be the best possible incubator for this world-changing technology.
Dyson has the money
Dyson isn’t exactly a stay-at-home professor cobbling together funky-looking vacuums in his garage. He was at one time, and that’s to his credit, but his leisure time now includes globe-trotting aboard the 300-foot vintage yacht Nahlin and shuttling between properties both vast and modest in a Gulfstream G650. The man isn’t poor, or in debt (ahem). With a net worth of between six and $12 billion depending on who and how you’re counting, Dyson’s got the numbers in the bank to fund R&D, fund factories, fund legal, fund robots and call on credit if need be.
Dyson has the focus
Everyone loves to follow Elon’s antics – except perhaps Tesla’s stockholders, who have had no shortage of chest-clutching moments as the company bounces between profit and (mostly) loss, and the founder/CEO bounces between episodes of lucidity and seeming lunacy. Great for headlines, not so great for morale, stock prices or production schedules. Elon is going to be Elon and I do not deny the man’s genius, drive, ambitions or vision, which is wide and peers far into the future. Put me on the rocket to Mars, brother. I’m with ya.
But Dyson’s ambitions, clearly, are a bit more compact and boringly realistic. Product-oriented, engineering-driven, proven and profitable, Dyson brings the business edge to the business of an electric car startup. Sure, up until now he’s only made vacuum cleaners, hand dryers, blow dryers, and sci-fi obelisks that heat, cool and clean the air in your flat. What he doesn’t make quite yet are cars, and cars are hard, beset as they are with regulations, beauracracy, politics and brand loyalty. Mistakes will be made. Problems will crop up. Delays will happen. But a steady hand on the tiller and some key breaks in terms of tech and maybe some lucky timing could be the difference between Dyson’s car riding in Tesla’s long shadow or taking the lead in one of the most important technological races we are currently running.
Source: forbes
