DYSON’S ELECTRIC SHOCK
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FORTUNE.COM // NOVEMBER 2019
cease work on the project, ending his electric
car dreams before the first model ever rolled
off the assembly line.
It was a gutsy decision and a rare public
setback for Dyson, who, with his family, owns
the entirety of the company that bears his
name. He had put his estimable reputation on
the line with the car, promising a “radically
different” vehicle that would feature “revolu-
tionary” battery technology while outperform-
ing more experienced competitors. And he
had promised to have it in customers’ hands
by 2021, a dramatically short time frame for
a neophyte automaker. In the end, a cha-
grined Dyson says the decision came down to
a simple business proposition. “It just wasn’t
commercially viable,” he said, in an exclusive
interview with Fortune the day after news
broke of the car’s demise. Although Dyson’s
crack auto team successfully created an in-
novative new car, he wasn’t willing to price
it below cost, as he believes the competition
is doing. “It’s a tragedy, really, because our
engineers have done a brilliant job.”
AMES DYSON, the billion-
aire British inventor and
entrepreneur, is stand-
ing on a small stage at
the mid-September gala
opening of his new flag-
ship retail store in Paris.
The space is more high-end
art gallery than appliance mart: matte black
walls and ceiling, gray tile floors, and stylish
gadgets displayed like sculptures, spotlighted
on white-topped plinths.
Dyson, spry and lanky at 72 years old, is
wearing owlish blue-frame glasses and a
copper-toned, thigh-length jacket evocative of
a mad scientist’s lab coat. In his cut-glass Eng-
lish accent he’s running through his company’s
latest wares: a hair dryer that uses circular
airflow to avoid heat damage; a hair styler that
wraps curls using a vortex of air; a bladeless
oval air purifier that blows hot and cold; a
combination water faucet and hand dryer. The
list goes on, ending, inevitably, with a cordless
vacuum cleaner, the category consumers most
closely associate with Dyson’s name.
For all the eye-catching design and techno-
logical wonder of Dyson’s body of work, many
in the audience are hoping he’ll make a pro-
nouncement about the one much-discussed
Dyson product that’s not yet for sale. Then the
great man utters the words they’ve longed to
hear: “the car.” He flicks to an aerial photo-
graph, not of an automobile, but of the former
Royal Air Force base in rural England where
his team has been working in great secrecy to
design an electric vehicle. “That’s about all I’ll
say about the car this evening,” he declares.
True to his word, he pivots to rhapsodizing
about an LED lamp designed by his 47-year-
old son and heir apparent, Jake.
Within weeks, the reason behind Dyson’s
reticence becomes clear: He had already
decided the car project was doomed. In fact,
while he was exuberantly peddling vacuums
and hair stylers, his bankers were unsuccess-
fully scrambling to find a buyer for the electric
vehicle program to which Dyson had com-
mitted four years, hundreds of engineers, and
2 billion pounds ($2.5 billion). On Oct. 10,
Dyson said his privately held company would
BUNKER MENTALITY
Reminders of World War II,
like this hangar, remain
at the former air base,
where Dyson prototyped
its doomed car.
“An
electric
vehicle
is not
just
a big
hair
dryer.”
PREVIOUS SPRE AD: EYEVINE/REDUX PIC TURES; ABOVE: COURTESY OF DYSON
