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conventional washing machine,” he says. Ultimately, Dyson sold
the washers for about 1,000 pounds ($1,500 at the time), at least
30% more than competitors’, and even then it lost money on ev-
ery one. Eventually, in 2005, the company decided to discontinue
it. Dyson vowed never to sell a product below cost again.
Before deciding to abandon the car, Dyson hired bankers
to try to sell the division. They approached “all the people you
might imagine,” says Dyson. (The Financial Times reported Jag-
uar Land Rover was among them.) No one bit. “We didn’t really
get close to anyone,” he says. In late September, Dyson made the
fateful decision to pull the plug.
Killing fledgling products actually isn’t that unusual for Dy-
son. “It’s heartbreaking,” says Stephen Courtney, Dyson’s concept
director. “But it is sort of the nature of working in research.”
Normally, the buttoned-up company fails privately and quietly.
With the EV, competitors, gearheads, battery experts, and busi-
ness journalists were scrutinizing its every move. “It was the
hardest decision we’ve ever had to make,” says Dyson. “So many
designers and engineers have put so much effort into it, and it
hadn’t seen the light of day.” The company plans to find roles
elsewhere for as many as possible of the 523 employees who
worked on the car. But there won’t be room for all of them.
D
YSON’S 67-ACRE corporate campus in Malmesbury, about
100 miles west of London, is sprinkled with iconic exam-
ples of ingenious industrial design, among them an origi-
nal Alec Issigonis–designed Mini Cooper, bisected to show
off its clever use of interior space; a Honda Super Cub motorcycle;
and two British fighter jets. One day a prototype of Dyson’s electric
car may join them. In the meantime, there are already hints that
the company’s automotive efforts won’t be wasted.
In a windowless industrial shed being constructed behind
Dyson’s striking mirrored-glass D9 research lab, the company
has built the largest advanced prototyping lab for solid-state bat-
teries in Europe. Beyond EVs, solid-state batteries have potential
uses in everything from mobile phones to consumer electronics
FAN
Bladeless fans fol-
lowed Airblades into
the market, using
similar technologies
while bringing style
to a staid and dusty
product segment. Dy-
son’s latest fans also
double as air purifiers.LIGHTING
LED lamps, designed
by James Dyson’s
47-year-old son,
Jake, adjust to
changing light condi-
tions and draw heat
away from the bulbs,
enabling them to last
as long as 60 years.HAIR DRYER
Dyson
accumu lated more
than 1,000 miles
of hair to test and
refine its Supersonic
hair dryer, which
catapulted the com-
pany into health and
beauty products.to aircraft. And Dyson says it will continue
its investment in them. “We think we’ve got
something that is groundbreaking and revo-
lutionary,” says Mike Rendall, Dyson’s head of
energy storage industrialization. Called D9A,
the new battery prototyping facility should
enable Dyson “to bring solid-state batteries to
market as soon as possible,” Rendall says.
The company is also investing heavily in
robotics with uses beyond automobiles. Inside
a section of the secretive D9 building, a team
of 65 robotics researchers are working on
machinery, much of it hidden under tarps
for a journalist’s visit. It is clear from what
little is visible—like the big brown armchair,
curiously perched on a table, upon which
sits something big under a sheet—that it is
not simply an evolution of its existing robot
vacuum cleaner, the Dyson’s 360 Eye. Dyson’s
director of robotics research, Vincent Clerc,
previously led SoftBank’s design of its hu-
manoid robots Pepper and Romeo. Is Dyson
developing a fully humanoid robot butler or
maid? Clerc won’t say, although he allows that
the company is focused on getting robots to
perceive the world in three dimensions.
The day after canceling the car, Dyson
seems subdued but philosophical. “There’s lots
of exciting stuff,” he says of his product pipe-
line, including gadgets that may benefit from
the automotive research. “And the silver lining
of this horrible decision is we can concentrate
on those.” Dyson may have missed his chance
to beat rival billionaire Elon Musk. But the in-
ventor seems eager to get back to the lab and
put his name on yet another breakthrough
product.