That Sucks: Tesla Was Hip to Dyson's Secret Car Plans Before Any of Us

Matt Posky
by Matt Posky

As you know, Dyson, the vacuum/hairdryer manufacturer, is moving into electric vehicles. The company has made plans to introduce a radical example (with new solid-state batteries) to market by 2020 that will suck and blow you away. But you only found out last year, which was long after Tesla Motors caught wind of a fresh competitor on the horizon.

Apparently, an engineer spilled the beans to Tesla’s legal representation around the same time he was being interviewed for a position at the automaker. If you’re wondering if he got the job, he did.

This is the second time Dyson’s plans for EV secrecy went haywire. Its public announcement wasn’t supposed to be until September of this year. However, a slip-up by the British government saw its National Infrastructure Delivery Plan mention that the public would help fund the company in “developing a new battery electric vehicle” — giving away the secret in 2016.

The more recent case with the Tesla engineer actually predates the governmental snafu, but legal complications stalled any public knowledge of the matter. According to courtroom testimony provided by Bloomberg, 30-year-old French national Pierre Pellerey informed Tesla about Dyson’s electric car over two years before it was made public — resulting in months of legal battles.

Pellerey, a former Dyson employee, had apparently forwarded Dyson’s plans to Tesla lawyer Yusuf Mohamed after successfully interviewing for a position with the company. Discovering the betrayal, Dyson moved for an injunction, preventing Pierre from working for Tesla for nine months. Considering Pellerey’s official hire date at Tesla, that would place the day of the leak somewhere in the middle of 2015.

From Bloomberg:

“Pellerey, a French national and a senior engineer earning 51,000 pounds a year at Dyson’s headquarters in Wiltshire, U.K., accepted a job from Tesla in March 2015, but didn’t immediately tell Dyson because the offer was conditional on getting a visa to work in the U.S., according to the court ruling released this week.

In May, with the visa still not approved, he was called into a secret meeting with two colleagues and told that James Dyson wanted the company to develop an electric car. They would be drafted to work on the confidential project, known only as “Project E.” The three were told to take their laptops and move to a secure area within the research department.”

“I felt a little uncomfortable about being involved in that project, as I knew I would be involved with electric vehicles at Tesla,” Pellerey later explained to the court. He also noted that, had he come forward, he would be risking his career at both companies.

Initially, Dyson issued a letter to the engineer stipulating that he had to wait 12 months before working for Tesla. Understandably concerned, Pellerey handed it over to Tesla’s legal council — who responded by warning him not to publish it on social media, as the company was gearing up for a legal battle with Dyson.

“The disclosure of that letter to Mr. Mohamed told him, a member of the outside world, that DTL [Dyson] was working on an electric car,” Judge Keith Lindblom ruled in February 2016. “That was just the type of disclosure that the Project E team had had impressed upon it that it must not make.”

“It does not require a great deal of imagination to come to the conclusion that DTL would not be going to such trouble if the only confidential information he possessed related to vacuum cleaners and hand dryers,” Judge Snowden said in the earlier October 2015 ruling, which forced Pellerey to wait nine months before beginning work at Tesla Motors.

Matt Posky
Matt Posky

A staunch consumer advocate tracking industry trends and regulation. Before joining TTAC, Matt spent a decade working for marketing and research firms based in NYC. Clients included several of the world’s largest automakers, global tire brands, and aftermarket part suppliers. Dissatisfied with the corporate world and resentful of having to wear suits everyday, he pivoted to writing about cars. Since then, that man has become an ardent supporter of the right-to-repair movement, been interviewed on the auto industry by national radio broadcasts, driven more rental cars than anyone ever should, participated in amateur rallying events, and received the requisite minimum training as sanctioned by the SCCA. Handy with a wrench, Matt grew up surrounded by Detroit auto workers and managed to get a pizza delivery job before he was legally eligible. He later found himself driving box trucks through Manhattan, guaranteeing future sympathy for actual truckers. He continues to conduct research pertaining to the automotive sector as an independent contractor and has since moved back to his native Michigan, closer to where the cars are born. A contrarian, Matt claims to prefer understeer — stating that front and all-wheel drive vehicles cater best to his driving style.

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  • Tstag Tstag on Nov 07, 2017

    Tesla ought to be worried. Dyson have made a big breakthrough (allegedly in battery tech) and aren't a small third world engineering firm. They can recruit from thousands of qualified engineers in an established car making country. If Dyson succeeds and Tesla don't have comparable battery tech then it will by Dyson who is remembered for reinventing the car not Tesla! No pressure.....

    • See 1 previous
    • HotPotato HotPotato on Nov 08, 2017

      @SCE to AUX I wonder if their "breakthrough" consists of figuring out that Bollore will sell them solid-state LMP batteries.

  • Sector 5 Sector 5 on Nov 07, 2017

    Holy cow! Are they trying to adapt Dyson technology in nuclear sub propulsion? Or is it Tesla time for diesel-electric subs?

  • Cprescott Fisker is another brand that Heir Yutz has killed.
  • Dwford Every country is allowed to have trade restrictions except the US.
  • 1995 SC Are there any mitigation systems that would have prevented this though? We had a ship hit a bridge in Jacksonville a few years back and it was basically dumb luck it didn't collapse. This looked like a direct hit.
  • Cprescott Oh, well.
  • 28-Cars-Later "The Chinese Ministry of Commerce claimed the Inflation Reduction Act is “discriminatory”"This what your mainstream social communism has wrought: a foreign power, major geopolitical rival and the #1 global industrial competitor cries "racism" when an act of Congress in any way presents a challenge - and the saddest part is there are Americans who will process this claim and agree if only in their own minds. To be clear, Wo xihuan Zhongguoren but the under 40yo PRC raised Mainlanders I've interacted with do believe they are a master race - but that's fine right?
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